


Theories of change

by LLitchi



Category: Smosh
Genre: Creator chose not to use ANY warning, Love Triangles, M/M, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-02-25 06:20:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21731476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LLitchi/pseuds/LLitchi
Summary: In which Sohinki makes a series of bad decisions and Wes comes along at the right time. A well-executed love triangle ensues.
Relationships: David Moss/Matt Sohinki, Joshua Ovenshire & Matt Sohinki
Comments: 11
Kudos: 17





	1. Hypothesis #1: Walk through this door, and change the world

**Author's Note:**

> 1) I can’t believe I’m writing RPF.  
> 2) The non-Smosh people are all OCs because I don’t actually know anything about their personal lives.  
> 3) Warning policy: I comply with archive warning and do not warn for anything else.  
> 4) I love comments, unless it’s about tagging.

Sohinki had this friend from elementary school to high school, Jackie, and Jackie’s mom meant the world to him when he was growing up. Whenever Sohinki’s brothers were being assholes he could just run to Jackie’s house, and Jackie wasn’t even there, but Jackie’s mom would just let him in and feed him and sometimes she taught him how to dance. He loved her more than he liked Jackie, really, with a sort of boyhood reverence for female authority figures who told him, repeatedly and as often as he demanded it, that he was number two to her, after only Jackie herself. But when Jackie’s mom died Sohinki had to learn to support his friend and to grieve in private, because the public grief was not his. Something good and someone good were forever gone from his life, and he felt like he was thrown into adulthood without his sea legs and robbed of a part of his home, but looking at him no one would have thought he had changed. Sohinki was still petty and still obsessed with games and still too mean for a little thing that weighed a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet, and yet, indubitably, Sohinki had changed.

It wasn’t like his high school graduation or his first day on a new job… moments like that are big and loud and everyone agrees that they mark a point of no return, after which people around you can no longer look at you as the same person you were before. It was a quietly defining moment, as if after it he had been secretly replaced by a different person, but no one noticed, and since then he’s just been waiting for everyone to catch up.

And now, in the dark of the studio after a recording and having changed out of the cheap dress that they bought for the punishment, Sohinki decides to have himself another of those quietly defining moments again.

It wasn’t…it wasn’t anything in particular that prompted it, nothing so final and so painful as Jackie’s mom’s passing away, but. It’s been eating at him and driving him to distraction, lusting after someone so close and being friend-zoned so effectively he could probably go up to them and hump their leg and they wouldn’t even notice anything different. Had Sohinki been pining from afar, it would have been less awkward, less resentment inducing and less productivity destroying. Up close and within arm’s reach, there is no space left for fantasy, no way to pretend Sohinki doesn’t want what he wants, and no way to deny the fact that he isn’t really wanted back. After all, it is unbelievably annoying and more bitter than sweet to be pining for an average looking man who is basically a ball of destructive energy and also very, very straight.

Well, the thing Lasercorn got going for him is that he is a good person, Sohinki reminds himself. A better person than Sohinki every day of the week. Someone who forgives easily and doesn’t sulk and who is loyal to the end of the earth. Someone that Sohinki could get stuck on for a very long time.

Nothing he’s tried has worked. Not Plan A, Wait for Lasercorn to Notice and Turn Gay, or Plan B, Try to Become Crazier to Get Lasercorn’s Attention. All he’s discovered that he is slightly insane himself.

It’s not unbearable, exactly. There are sweet moments, like them playing games together and dunking on Joven and Wes as a competitive sport. One time they kept teaming up on Wes over and over for no reason at all, and they couldn’t stop giggling for the entire video. But then Lasercorn would do something like date a girl and be generally uninterested in Sohinki outside of work, and Sohinki would get fresh reminders about the fact that Lasercorn doesn’t think about him nearly as much as he thinks about Lasercorn, probably stops thinking about him as soon as he’s out of Lasercorn’s sight, never mind Lasercorn’s glaring lack of desire to touch his dick, which is actually kinda a deal breaker. Sohinki’s chest would then flare with something painful, a chronic sort of pain, hitting him at unexpected moments but most often on rainy days, and then he can’t think about anything else for a while, until the pain stops. And it is not unbearable, but Sohinki never liked pain.

Sohinki has his hand on the door of the studio.

 _Walk through this door_ , he tells himself, _walk through this door and you won’t think about Lasercorn again_.

That easily? Wouldn’t Sohinki just think about Lasercorn more?

_There won’t even be heartache. Nothing has been lost. You just need to let go of this fantasy and move on._

But Sohinki’s loved him for years, and they’ve been best friends for most of it. They know each other as well as anyone could know another person, learning what they could by feel and by bickering and by touch.

_Walk through this door and leave this sad sack piece of shit Sohinki behind. You are a new person now._

The door opens from the other side and Sohinki falls through it, the decision having been made for him. Then he lands on Wes’s chest.

***

There’s a small smile on Wes’s face.

“What were you doing with that door Sohinki?”

He glares at Wes the best he could given his vantage point. “I wasn’t paying attention! What are you doing going back to the studio anyway? I didn’t think anyone else was still around.”

“Actually,” Wes shrugs, “I’ve been looking for you.”

“Sounds like a serial killer thing to say at night.” Sohinki levers off of Wes and experimentally nudges him away, but goddamn that is a solid wall of muscles.

“I mean it. I’ve been trying to ask you something.”

What big teeth you have, Sohinki thinks hysterically. “Ask away,” he says out loud.

“Are you,” Wes says, grabbing one of Sohinki’s wrists because he’s still trying to get away. Sohinki discovers he doesn’t like that. “Are you actually gay?”

“What?” Sohinki shouts, and immediately cringes. Twenty-odd years of hiding his flaming gayness and he still can’t answer a simple direct question to save his life.

It’s not like he’s in the closet. He’s just, _not out_ , and like, actively doing things to make people think he’s straight, short of actually sleeping with a girl. Being straight is easy and pretending to crush on Mari is easy, because then the others can keep making gay jokes at his expense and he doesn’t have to take it seriously, not really, and they don’t have to treat him with kid gloves. If Sohinki is gay, the next time someone calls him a bitch or tells him to eat a dick, they are going to do something dumb like apologize afterward and then he would have to strangle them to death.

He coughs. “Don’t tell me you actually believe those guys. Why do you want to know anyway?”

Wes rolls his eyes. “Well, if you were gay then I would ask you out.”

“WHAT?” This time Sohinki fairly shrieks. Inexplicably he wants to go back to Wes’s chest and hide his face in it. “Are you fucking with me? You only date like, models and actresses.”

Sohinki might look slimming in a dress, but he’s no model.

“No,” Wes says gently. “Look, you know I edit videos. I had to watch your face over and over and after enough time I figured I really liked it.”

“That’s convincing.”

“Sohinki, remember how I’m always trying to follow along with what you want to do, even after you repeatedly try to leave me behind?”

“What? I don’t remember that.”

“What I mean is that I like to go along with you because it’s fun. You always have these insane ideas and you keep making up weird rules for games that you think everybody else should follow. And then when we don’t follow your rules you say we’re cheating.”

Small things fall into place. Wes giving all of his date cards to Sohinki. Wes messing with Sohinki’s ears all the time. Wes doing whatever Sohinki wants when they play GTA. Sohinki feels his face heat.

“Why am I only hearing complaints? Do you even like me?”

“Yes!” Wes says. “I like you _because_ you’re hypercompetitive and insane.”

He realizes that Wes is still holding his wrist. “And what about… Well. Are _you_ gay?”

“I’m bi.”

Sohinki coughs. “That’s. That’s great for you. I think.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well then—”

“Sohinki,” Wes says, a little exasperated. “Are you gonna go out with me or not?”

“Christ,” Sohinki says feelingly. “Don’t. Don’t rush me.”

But, Sohinki remembers, he is a different person now. He could do things the old Sohinki was never able to do before. Such as, apparently, go out with attractive people.

Sohinki yanks his hand back. He can’t believe he allowed Wes to have wrist control. His hand automatically goes to his head and messes up his hair.

“This is no way to ask someone out, you know.”

Wes has that small smile again. “Normally, I would ask them out to coffee and then try to make a move on them there, but we already go for coffee all the time. Also for some reason Joven is always there and monopolizing your attention.”

“What if I said yes? Where would you take me out then?”

Wes cups Sohinki’s elbow. Sohinki thinks he might get used to what a touchy-feely guy Wes is. “Well, since I live with Joven I’d ask you to take me back to _your_ place and teach me how to play Hearthstone.”

“And teach you how to dance,” Sohinki says, fighting a smile. “I’m not dating someone who can’t dance.”

“Good to know,” Wes says, tugging Sohinki’s elbow so that he falls into Wes’s arms again. Sohinki’s heart is hurting. It’s been through so much today.

“I’m warning you,” Sohinki mumbles, “I’m shallow and I like cute things and I’m only saying yes because I like your face.”

Wes is tall enough, that bastard, to kiss the top of Sohinki’s head.

“That’s okay. Me too. Can we go to your place tomorrow?”

Good. Sohinki exhales, luxuriating in the bracket of Wes’s arms. He doesn’t think he could take more today. And in lieu of an answer Sohinki just tugs on the lapel of Wes’s leather jacket and looks up into Wes’s eyes, tentative, hopeful, _yes_. Sohinki imagines that he can see some familiar warmth and a flash of longing in Wes’s face, some combination of sheer affection and happiness that makes Sohinki feel cherished like he used to feel so long ago, in Jackie’s apartment with her mom telling him he was her number two. And when the kiss comes, Sohinki leans into it, tasting something sugary sweet with a little heat at the edges, and chasing this new sense of possibilities that opened to him with the door, feeling weightless, free-falling, and a little brave.

***

As Sohinki suspected, dating Wes consists of a lot of touching: A casual hand on the small of his back, fingers running down his arm, careless, and their legs brushing constantly, out of sight. It just makes Sohinki hyperaware of other people, if they’re seeing this, if they’re noticing how much more Wes is touching him now, unnecessarily and warm and good. Like, when they’re at that trampoline place, Wes just keeps barreling into him, and then trying to cushion him when he falls on his face. And like, when they’re just putting their costumes on for Halloween, Wes keeps trying to help him even though Lasercorn is already zipping him up. The most nerve wracking part is that he has no idea whether they’re being blatant and obvious but this is just normal for Smosh, or if this much physical contact is already par for the course for male friends and he’s just being a pussy, because either way no one comments on it. For a group of people completely thirsty for gossip and liable to jump on any hint of innuendo, their friends have failed miserably to pick up on Sohinki and Wes flirting under their nose.

Embarrassingly, Sohinki gets completely too worked up from it. Like, the next day after Wes asked him out, for some god forsaken reason Wes decided that Sohinki could just teach him some Hearthstone right in the office, and not even twenty minutes in Sohinki ended up half sitting in Wes’s lap. Wes said something like, Can you even see the screen? Am I blocking it? And, Gosh, if you sat in front of me you would be able to see easier. Also, of course I have to have my arm around you to use the mouse.

Sohinki mentally slaps himself when he realizes what happened. It actually takes a few minutes because he’s so into building the goddamn dragon deck with Wes’s shit cards.

“Wes,” Sohinki hisses, “you are not allowed to be this smooth.”

Incredibly, he thinks that he and Wes are the two people with the least experience in the office. Neither of them should know what smooth even looks like.

A giggle from behind him. “I’m not smooth. You’re just very easy.”

“That’s, uh. That’s not something that’s ever been said about me before.”

And then the door to the office bangs open and Lasercorn barrels in.

“Is that Hearthstone? Are you getting into it Wes?”

Sohinki jumps two feet into the air, and for a couple of a seconds he can’t hear anything because he has blue-screened.

“I didn’t see you there Sohinki,” Lasercorn says. “Oh this. This is a very compromising position.”

“What?” Sohinki shrieks. “What the fuck are you talking about? It’s because I couldn’t see the screen you idiot.”

“Wow,” Lasercorn laughs, “how are you getting more suspicious?”

What the fuck is that tone? What did Lasercorn even see? Sohinki can’t think like this when he doesn’t even know how compromising they looked or didn’t look to other people. What the fuck is his turn here? He has no card to play.

He decides to go on the offensive.

“Whatever. It’s actually nice and warm in here. Either you get in or get out Lasercorn.” Sohinki pats Wes’s thigh for emphasis.

He’s turned around now, to face Lasercorn, and he’s looking in the general vicinity of Lasercorn’s head but to his horror he finds that he’s actually physically incapable of meeting Lasercorn’s eyes.

“Wes’s lap does look very cozy,” Lasercorn says, and there’s that tone again. It doesn’t sound… amused. It sounds dangerous. Sohinki suppresses an involuntary shiver, because that would give away too much.

“Sohinki is helping me build a dragon deck,” Wes explains, apparently hoping to steer the conversation back to safer grounds.

“Let’s do it Russian doll style,” Lasercorn says, ignoring Wes.

“What?”

“Wes the biggest one on the outside, me in the middle, and you the smallest one on the inside.”

“What.”

“That’s not gonna work,” Wes says. “I will be so far away from the screen.”

“Don’t know till we try it,” Lasercorn says, grabbing another chair and pushing himself in between Wes and Sohinki.

Sohinki, still in shock, lets himself be pulled onto the other chair and into Lasercorn’s lap. Lasercorn’s pressed against his back, and also has just come in from the cold, and that’s the only reason why Sohinki can’t help but shiver this time.

“You just want to know all my Hearthstone secrets,” he says weakly.

Sohinki can see Wes flailing in the back because he didn’t know where to put his hands. Lasercorn’s arm, meanwhile, went straight for Sohinki’s waist, his chin propped up on Sohinki’s shoulder and his breath warm on Sohinki’s neck.

“You’re just messing around,” Wes complains. “Hearthstone is serious business.”

“Er,” Sohinki says. “Where did you learn to cuddle so aggressively Lasercorn?”

“This is not an aggressive cuddle! This is the setup position for a rear naked choke.”

“No, the three of us are totally cuddling. Wes, cuddle Lasercorn properly. Hold him tenderly and put your boner right up against his ass.”

There are squawks of protest from both of the outer layers of the Russian doll.

“ _I’ll_ put my boner up against _your_ ass. Is this the Russian way Sohinki?”

“Yes,” Sohinki says in his Russian accent, which is even more offensive than his French accent, and therefore better. “Comrade Stalin has demonstrated this form of bonding to me many times before.”

“I told you I wouldn’t be able to see the screen,” Wes whines. “All I have is orange hair in my face now.”

“Sohinki,” Lasercorn says, suddenly strangled. “What shampoo are you using? It smells weird.”

Sohinki scoots as far away from Lasercorn as he can. “Don’t smell me then. And I don’t like scented shampoos you nerd.”

And then he yelps, because there’s a cold nose on his neck and Lasercorn is sniffing like he can’t help himself. The arm around Sohinki’s waist tightens.

“What are you doing,” Wes says, a little alarmed. “What are you doing to my Sohinki?”

Lasercorn doesn’t take the bait. “Is it your body wash? Your laundry detergent? Why is it so—”

“Well, you like coconuts so clearly you have terrible taste and I have to change my haircare product immediately.”

“It’s not coconut!” Lasercorn snaps. “It smells like…earthy. Woody.”

“Manly,” Sohinki insists.

“He smells good,” Wes says, but his voice is like a wall. “Actually, that’s enough from you Lasercorn.”

Wes stands up and physically pulls Lasercorn away from Sohinki. It’s easy, because they are both a little dazed. And then they are all just standing around two computer chairs and staring at each other like idiots.

Lasercorn breaks out of it first. “You guys suck,” he declares, and nearly runs out of the room. “Keep your Hearthstone secrets to yourselves then.”

“Yeah,” Wes crosses his arms, glares at the door. “That’s what it was.”

“I don’t entirely understand what happened,” Sohinki says, recovering slowly and hearing his voice from very far away. “But I really want to make out right now.”

Wes’s head snaps to attention comically fast. Sohinki doesn’t know if he’s turned on because Wes just tried to protect his honor or because Lasercorn just tried to take his honor in the first place. Either way, Wes takes one look at him, says “Fuck,” and grabs his arm. Sohinki thinks that Wes is going to kiss him, but Wes just pulls him out of the office and into the hallway. Toward the stairs, Sohinki realizes. Where they aren’t going to be caught.

As soon as the door shuts behind them, Sohinki pushes Wes into it, his hands shaking from adrenaline. He never does this, not in public, certainly not in the office stairwell, but it feels incredibly right and necessary that they do this right now. He can’t take much more buildup or Lasercorn sniffing him before he combusts into a thousand of confused and sexually frustrated Sohinki pieces. And then Wes flips him, holding Sohinki now against the door, compressing him whole again and tethering him to earth.

One of Sohinki’s hands sneaks under Wes’s t-shirt, just a little, and his other hand is on the back of Wes’s head, tangling in Wes’s hair and pulling him down. “I want,” Sohinki says, not knowing exactly what he wants, only that something relieves this heat inside of his heart.

Wes seems to know what he means though, and doesn’t go for another kiss, but for Sohinki’s neck, latching onto a spot below his jaw. “You have a mole right here,” Wes pants, dragging his bottom lip over the spot. “It drives me crazy.”

Sohinki shivers. He’s ticklish. His head leans involuntarily back, giving Wes better access. Originally he meant to do more, be the one year older that he has on Wes, but Wes’s hand is big on the small of his back and Wes’s mouth is making wet sounds against his ears and he can’t do anything but holds on. “Tell me more,” he demands.

“I can’t stop looking at it.” Wes pulls his mouth off of Sohinki’s ear, so Sohinki takes the opportunity to kiss Wes instead, little kisses, making his way around by touch because his eyes keep fluttering shut. “I always want to reach out and touch you there and I always end up flicking your ear instead. You know you’re,” a hitch, because Sohinki is rubbing experimentally against Wes’s thigh, “you’re so jumpy when someone touches you normally.”

“I’m not jumpy now,” Sohinki protests, and rubs against him again for emphasis.

“I know. God, look,” Wes pants harshly, “Look, how far do you want this to go?”

What a polite boy, Sohinki thinks. He palms Wes through the jeans, daring and obvious with meaning. God, out of the two of them Sohinki _is_ probably the easier one.

But Wes says, pained and keening, “Not here. And I’m not gonna come in my pants.”

“Fine,” Sohinki says, a little petulant but a little grateful too, that he is not immediately out of his depth. It gets a little softer after that, no less heat, but hazier, and more languid. Directionless, like they don’t have to move toward anything other than being here and licking into each other’s mouth, trading little nips to the jaw and inexpertly making out, guided only by what feels good.

Sohinki wonders if Wes always tastes a little sweet.

Eventually there’s a clanging on the floors above, like Matt Raub escaping into the stairs and stealing a smoke again, so they break apart. Sohinki feels unsteady on his legs, still holding onto Wes’s jacket for support and willing the hot flush on his face to come down. Wes’s pupils are all dark and blown, his face a little red from beard burn, and his hair sticking up because Sohinki loved feeling it between his fingers and hasn’t really stopped messing it up. Wes is smiling a little goofily, but, Sohinki imagines, Sohinki must be as well.

“Your,” Sohinki coughs. “Your hair.” He reaches up to fix it, because it still looked soft and inviting.

“Oh God,” Wes says faintly. “Your neck.”

“What,” Sohinki slaps a hand to the spot under his jaw. “Is it bad? It didn’t feel bad.”

Wes must have been telling the truth earlier, because he can’t seem to tear his eyes away from that spot now. “It’s a little red. I can’t believe this, but we have to get you a band aid.”

They make their way carefully back to the office, Wes on Sohinki’s left side to use his enormous body to block the view to Sohinki’s mole. Mari doesn’t even look up from her screen when they come in, and Joven only mumbles a distracted hello from his seat. No one sees that anything has changed even as Wes helps Sohinki bandage up the hickie he gave him, and still a little giddy, Sohinki giggles.

“What are you plotting now?” Joven asks.

“Nothing! I just got bit by something. If I don’t show up to work tomorrow, you know why.“

Mari cranes her neck over. “Oh Mickey Mouse? That’s a cute band aid Wes.”

“I know right?”

“She’s being condescending Wes.”

“No, I think it’s cute that Wes still has the spirit and metabolism of a fourth grader. Also, does Wes secretly hate you? Because you know you’re gonna have to shoot with that band aid there.”

Sohinki and Wes share a quick, conspiratorial glance. The back of Sohinki’s neck feels hot again.

“That’s impossible,” Sohinki manages. “Wes likes me the best after all.”

***

That’s not to say that there aren’t problems. Sohinki has never been in a relationship before where they are both the man-child. Like, Wes can stand up for his friends but he can’t stand up to someone he likes to save his life, so when Sohinki is being a passive-aggressive asshole or just straight up aggressive, Wes folds up even more than Joven does, and then Sohinki has to feel guilty all week. Sohinki might actually run out of money buying Wes apology chocolates. Well, he gave Wes apology packs of Hearthstone cards once, but they did not work nearly as well as chocolates.

“You don’t have to,” Wes says finally when he sees Sohinki’s peace offering. “When I was nursing that crush on you I actually thought your raging dickishness was cute,” and at Sohinki’s disbelieving noise, he adds, “I still do. Like, the things you get mad over are completely unreasonable and hypocritical, but it’s sort of cat-like and cute, right? Like, _grr_.”

Sohinki is a little lost. No one has ever told him that his absolute worst traits were tolerable, let alone endearing.

“You aren’t even going to be able to stand up to a cat, are you?”

“Nope.” Wes grins, kissing the corner of Sohinki’s mouth.

“Let’s eat this together then,” Sohinki says, relieved. “Before the others come.”

***

They talked about the other problem once. Wes asked in a roundabout way when exactly Sohinki had planned to come out of the closet, and Sohinki answered in a roundabout way that he didn’t think of it as staying in the closet, he just did not want to share his private life with approximately one million people on the Internet. Wes then stated in a very direct way that he wanted Lasercorn to know that Sohinki was a hundred percent taken, and Sohinki had to laugh, because if he could stand thousands of girls openly thirsting after Wes online then Wes could stand one Lasercorn showing absolutely no interest in him in real life.

Wes did not successfully refrain himself from asking Sohinki about that time, what about that time when Lasercorn nearly molested you, and Sohinki said, okay, that’s not what happened, and anyway once was an accident, twice would be a coincidence, and three times a pattern. Let’s see it happen a third time. Besides which, Sohinki had thousands of traumatic data points where Lasercorn had no interest in him and did not try to smell his neck.

As a compromise, they start going on dates outside of Sohinki’s threadbare apartment. An out of the way coffeeshop on weekend mornings. A haunted house once on their day off. The movies a lot because it’s easy and because Sohinki has seen basically no movie and everything is new to him. They hold hands, and when they get home they have sex. Joven is under the impression that Wes has a new secret girlfriend because Joven is sometimes intuitive but always manages to be wrong. And they all think Sohinki is at home playing Dota because that’s “in character.”

Well, all of them except for Lasercorn. Terrifyingly Sohinki has no idea what Lasercorn thinks. By mutual silent agreement they have not since mentioned The Incident, ignorance being the gift the keeps on giving. And for all intents and purposes nothing between them has changed. They keep cheating and being too competitive and picking on Joven, who cares too much about winning for someone so terrible at video games. There’s just, little comments, like Lasercorn being more eager than usual to accuse Sohinki of flaming gayness and audibly scoffing when Sohinki pretends to crush on Mari. Probably that’s the only time when Wes and Lasercorn are on the same side, both of them sabotaging Sohinki out of nowhere the moment his character hits on Mari in GTS. And then Sohinki has to do a non-apology apology to Wes later, like, I don’t really do that a lot, it’s just a habit baby. I promise I’ll be better.

Also, he accidentally sent Lasercorn a text once. “I’ll be there in 5,” and then, “Oops, wrong person sorry.”

Lasercorn texted back, ominously: “Was it Wes?”

Which Sohinki ignored.


	2. Hypothesis #2: Only San Diego knows

The Comic-con trip promises a welcome reprieve and inaugurates for all of them a kind of temporary truce. It’s that curiously foreign effect of being on the road again. They have to do so many events and preview so many games that they have no choice but to stick uncommonly close together, a kind of trust fall exercise where they’re constantly falling, and so whenever they turn around there has to be trust. They end up mostly holing up in the AirBnB anyway, camping a Poké stop and being as lazy as their boss would permit. Considering that it’s Matt Raub, they are surprised to even have to put out a video at all.

Sohinki feels rawer than usual, softer and more vulnerable to good cheer and random acts of generosity, and Lasercorn himself seems a little bit like a Bengal tiger taken out of its habitat and transported to a strange place. On the drive to San Diego somehow they end up piled together in the back seat, and Sohinki braces for some awkwardness until he realizes that Lasercorn has given him a pass twice, both on deliberate and egregious misrepresentations of what really happened when Sohinki freaked out last time on their flight as they hit supposedly normal turbulence. Sohinki still holds a grudge, because Lasercorn had said something like, _If only you were a girl then this needing to hold someone’s hand would have been cute_ , which didn’t even mean anything, but which pissed Sohinki off so much he was a jerk for the entire day.

And Lasercorn says now, “Need to hold my hand this time too?” when they aren’t even on a plane, so Sohinki answers, sulky, “You didn’t want to that time. Joven actually did it,” which is a little bit inaccurate, because in the end Lasercorn eventually said yes, fine, only by that point Sohinki was already pissed off.

Lasercorn only shrugs. “I did want to.”

“No, you said you would only do it if I was a girl.”

Joven is appalled all the way from the front seat.

“That is not what he said!”

“Well, you’re still not a girl, and I want to hold your hand now.”

Wes is in another car. Sohinki inexplicably feels like he’s cheating.

“Why?” Sohinki says suspiciously, giving his hands to Lasercorn anyway.

“You’ve been doing that thing where you’re cold and you put your hands between your legs again.”

“Oh.”

“Joven,” Lasercorn shouts, “Turn down the air conditioning you freak.”

Sohinki takes his hands back after a respectable five minutes, but they stay warm the rest of the way.

***

They will never do an actual cooking show, but once in a while Joven inexplicably contracts the nesting instinct and wants to feed all of them a home cooked breakfast. Sohinki is too full of misplaced generosity and spillover Christmas spirit to point out the fact that if they go to the supermarket and make everything from scratch like Joven wants, then nobody will be able to eat breakfast until lunch time. Instead he lets Joven take over and claim the undisputed title of Breakfast Bitch, which Joven is secretly thrilled by and cannot be more obvious about it.

“It stems from his Beta instinct,” Sohinki explains to everyone once they’re in the Breakfast Bus. “Joven equates being good at video games with being an Alpha, and all of us here are better at video games than he is, so he thinks that he has to please the Alphas by cooking us breakfast.”

“Slightly better than your Santa Claus bangs Rudolph theory,” Lasercorn says. “I’ll allow it.”

“What?” Joven yelps. And then, “Do I think that?”

“Clearly yes. If you were an Alpha then you straight up would have tried to choke me by now.”

Sohinki only makes fun of Joven so much because small, tiny parts of him are terrified that they are the same person deep down, a sort of beta males driven only by extreme pettiness. Sohinki may be all around better at video games, smarter, funnier, cooler, and more handsome. But what if they are both at heart fundamentally unlikable and plainly, straightforwardly just not good people? Sometime in the future Sohinki would like to finally learn the secret to not make people hate him, but he suspects that it is literally just trying to be a better person. He knows that even though Lasercorn has the reputation for chaos and general sociopathy, it’s him and Joven who always supply the meanest, shittiest and most butthurt things said on any given episode. Maybe, that’s why Sohinki found himself drawn to Lasercorn and Wes, to better people. Drawn, maybe, to something good.

“Although,” Flitz says, “I don’t think Alphas are usually that small, Sohinki.”

“I didn’t say I was an Alpha. I said Joven thought I was an Alpha. I am a Beta, obviously.”

Lasercorn laughs, and Sohinki giggles because it is so rare that he can make Lasercorn laugh. “Wait, so who’s the Alpha here?”

“You are. Well, you and Mari.”

“I am? Yay!” And then Lasercorn puts his arm around the back of Sohinki’s seat.

Wes whines, “What about me?”

Sohinki feels a little guilty, but buoyed by the truce, he explains, “You follow along usually. That’s a Beta thing. Don’t worry, that means that you’re a nice guy.”

“Thanks?”

“What kind of forums have you been reading?” Flitz says, concerned.

“Funny you should ask,” Sohinki says, gleeful and getting into his groove now. “Since Mari isn’t here, I have some literature for all of you menfolk. Now, the first thing you have to learn is to never be nice to girls, who are all sluts. Also, don’t worry if this seem contradictory with what I said earlier, because one feature of this theory is that it doesn’t require any internal validity.”

“We’re here,” Joven shouts from the driver seat. “Thank god.”

“Hey Sohinki,” Wes whispers when they pile out of the car, “Hang on for me a minute.”

Sohinki nods. Like Lasercorn, Wes doesn’t let video games get under his skin, and is incapable of holding a grudge. Sohinki always assumed that Wes too had in him a bit of sociopathy, which allowed him to keep his Wesrage in check and to never take any insult personally, even the ones below the belt. It turns out that Wes only has bad taste and atrocious judgment, both of which have led him to think Sohinki was cool, and that it would be fun to let Sohinki wreck his Rolls Royce when they play GTA and to give Sohinki money by placing bounties on Joven.

“Hey,” Sohinki says, pulling Wes behind the SUV and feeling bolder because the others have gone inside. “What’s up?”

Wes grins, looking a little sleepy still, which has a side effect of making him seem high and happy. “You’re cheerful today,” Wes says. “It makes you more approachable and I don’t know if I like it.”

“Are you gonna approach me?” Sohinki asks.

Wes closes the distance between them. They are in broad daylight, only half hidden by a car in a parking lot, but fuck it, it’s only San Diego and only San Diego that knows. Sohinki kisses back, soft and without tongue because they had only just woken up. Wes isn’t satisfied, and pulls Sohinki in by the waist, slender and yielding under Wes’s hand. He feels obscene like this, being held and handled by a man two times his size. He almost wants Wes to just pick him up and deposit him on the hood on the car, but he pulls away first.

“Let’s go make breakfast,” Sohinki says, a little breathless. They are two months into this new relationship, which remains a strangely fragile and precious thing, where they are learning how to be together, learning what they would ask and what they would give. Sohinki would give Wes this, a kiss in the parking lot, slightly regretful that he could not give him more.

***

After twenty minutes of running around in the supermarket, Sohinki can understand a little bit of Wes’s grumbling that Joven tends to effortlessly and by sheer accident monopolize Sohinki’s attention. Sohinki can’t help the fact that they have been friends forever though, and it is extremely fun if not too sporting to poke at Joven for being so serious about grocery shopping, all appearances of a Deeply Domestic Husband in the making. And if Joven weren’t so incredibly thirsty for women in general and Mari specifically, and didn’t have such appalling personal hygiene, maybe he and Sohinki might have been able to someday retire together as platonic life partners, an easy and comforting friendship where Joven would continue to despair of Sohinki’s sleep schedule and Sohinki would train Joven out of his creepy ways by liberal use of electric shock. But as it is they wouldn’t even make good roommates. Wes when he brings it up isn’t jealous of Joven exactly, only jealous of how much closer he and Sohinki would still have to grow.

That cursed codependence masquerading as friendship between Joven, Sohinki and Lasercorn came from practically living in each other’s pocket those first years of Smosh and Clevver Games. The first jobs they had really—their first jobs that mattered, certainly, and they became adults together like that, half trying to grow up and half wanting to stay in a boys’ club forever. Or maybe it was just Sohinki longing for something more, trapping himself there until Lasercorn moves on and Joven is all he has left. The same sort of camaraderie, but no heartache.

As far as the shopping goes Sohinki and Lasercorn both decide to hang back, letting the people with strong opinions about breakfast fight it out between themselves, only occasionally intervening when the sugar content of whatever Wes tries to smuggle into the basket passes 99 percent, after which point it can no longer plausibly said to constitute a heart-healthy breakfast. In the meantime Lasercorn takes control of the camera and keeps filming Sohinki, even when Sohinki is literally doing nothing to help or actively antagonizing Joven. They can be picking out peppers and Lasercorn would have his camera on Sohinki, uncharacteristically thoughtful and a little like he is looking for a sign of the coming apocalypse in Sohinki’s face. Sohinki would commandeer the camera himself, but he has a coffee in his hands and refuses to let go of it. Later, when they go back, Sohinki plans to be exactly as helpful in the cooking as he is now in the grocery shopping; namely, he’s not going to do anything at all except wander around looking pretty.

Needless to say, Sohinki is not domestic himself. He has been called a _domesticated_ _cat_ who subsists on coffee, tic tacs and takeouts, but he is not _domestic_. He cannot cook, and would be lost if left to his own devices in the supermarket. One time a Ralphs employee had actually gone over to help because he looked so “bewildered by the dairy aisle.” Mark, his boyfriend at the time, said he was “charmlessly helpless.” Sohinki himself contemplated more than once if he should just give up on the gay thing and try to get himself a stay-at-home wife like his mom always wanted him to. Strangely he’d always pictured himself in his middle-age as married with kids. Chained to a computer and still playing games with rapidly declining cognitive-motor skills, maybe, but somehow also raising shitty little kids with someone out of his league.

Lasercorn doesn’t cook either. Lasercorn _will_ probably marry a very nice girl who is a good cook.

When they get back, Wes and Joven tear into the groceries, and with the comfort of many years living together, move around each other in the kitchen and begin cooking. The clanging, sizzling, and familiar smell of home cooking wake up everyone else. They put the DC panel livestream on in the background and congregate around the living room, loitering near the food in a facsimile of a lazy Christmas morning with their family, which Sohinki supposes Comic Con qualifies as, for nerds. He grabs a camera and films Wes. The sight of a hunk looking sweet, rumpled and preparing breakfast is liable to rocket their view count skyward into Youtube heaven. When Wes notices Sohinki zooming in on his face, he turns and smiles into the camera, his eyes happy and full of uncomplicated affection, and Sohinki finds himself having to look away.

“Sohinki,” Lasercorn hisses into his ear. “Sohinki, come with me for a second.”

“Oh my gosh,” Sohinki gasps. “You’re…out of nowhere.”

But Lasercorn is already dragging him toward one of the bedrooms. Sohinki and Joven shared a room the night before, like they usually did on road trips, but they’re going into Lasercorn’s and Wes’s room now, smaller and darker, with only a tiny little window because Sohinki had had the foresight to scout every room first. Really, the main reason he rooms with Joven is because Joven will fight him on it but the other two won’t bother.

“What did you want?” Sohinki asks once they are inside. He tries not to think about what Lasercorn might want.

Lasercorn mostly seems determined and oddly serious, and probably, almost certainly, this is the first time that Sohinki has had Lasercorn’s full attention in his life.

“I need you to confirm something for me,” Lasercorn says.

“What?” Sohinki asks with trepidation.

Lasercorn shakes his head. “I am going crazy, so I need you to confirm for me that I am attracted to guys.”

“Er.” Sohinki opens his mouth. Closes it again. He doesn’t believe it. Rather he doesn’t want to believe it, because it means that Lasercorn has been attracted to guys all along, just not to Sohinki. “Do you want me to show you some gay porn? Why do people always assume I watch gay porn?”

“No.” Suddenly Lasercorn is too close. Sohinki’s heart is hurting again. “I want to… You won’t even have to do anything.”

Now Sohinki can’t think about anything except what Lasercorn wants.

“What does _that_ mean?”

“Look, I saw you and Wes in the parking lot,” Lasercorn says, and oh God, oh Jesus Christ, that’s how Lasercorn knew. They were too complacent, too dumb, too giddy with affection. And Sohinki has no idea where Lasercorn is going with this but he feels a little sick, because he doesn’t want to regret kissing Wes. Eventually someone was bound to…. but he’s not prepared for it to happen now.

“You saw—”

“I won’t tell anyone,” Lasercorn cuts him off. “But I can’t stop thinking about it. You looked…. I mean, that’s why it has to be you.”

Sohinki can’t process anything Lasercorn’s just said. Lasercorn has bluescreened him again. “It has to be me for what?”

“To help me see if I’m attracted to guys! Either I’ve gone crazy or I’m attracted to guys because I can’t stop thinking about the way you smelled and the way you looked that time.”

Lasercorn takes one step closer. Sohinki backs up into the door. “What do you need me to do?”

“Nothing,” Lasercorn says. “You just stand there while I – Can you just stand there while I try to jerk it?”

Whatever is left of Sohinki’s brain dies a screaming death. Its higher functions can’t control his actions anymore, so involuntarily Sohinki’s eyes drop straight to Lasercorn’s crotch, which _is_ bulging a little, Jesus. The shock of it hits Sohinki like a wall. Lasercorn _is_ serious. But what if, God forbid, what if Lasercorn can’t get it up? Sohinki doesn’t even want to contemplate the situation where he lets Lasercorn do it and it turns out that Lasercorn can’t get it up, because Sohinki has lied to himself, has almost fooled himself into believing it, but Sohinki is still holding on to the fantasy where Lasercorn always thought about Sohinki in the back of his head, a distant but real possibility that was open to a night of drinking or an especially spectacular session of Portal 2, only that possibility was never acted on and never realized. If Sohinki lets Lasercorn do this, he would only know for sure that there was never anything there.

“How about,” Sohinki licks his lips. “How about I show you some gay porn? I confess, I do watch a _ton_ of—” 

“That doesn’t work you idiot. It’s just porn. It’s just buff dudes and I like, I mean, I seem to like smaller—”

“The search term you’re looking for is ‘twink.’”

Lasercorn laughs once, and then catches himself. “Maybe that’s why. I mean, look,” Lasercorn says, and grabs Sohinki’s arm. “Please, it has to be you.”

The magic words. Sohinki feels weak. It probably won’t work, but Lasercorn has _just_ said it couldn’t be anyone but him, and if Sohinki wants to find out once and for all, it’s now or never. Sohinki’s resolve crumbles into the sea. He’s just helping a friend out, no homo. Well, one homo, and potentially two. Anyway, Lasercorn’s hand is already on the zipper.

“Yeah, okay,” Sohinki says.

Lasercorn unzips without another word. It really is happening. Sohinki doesn’t know where to look: at Lasercorn’s angry, shiny dick jutting out of his pants, or at Lasercorn’s face, hungry and openly desperate and eyes roaming up and down Sohinki’s body, settling somewhere on his face, or maybe his neck. He wishes he knew how to be more enticing to a man who was previously only interested in women, except for maybe spontaneously growing boobs. Instead he slumps clumsily, ineffectually further into the door, so turned on he’s almost paralyzed.

“Yeah,” Lasercorn says through gritted teeth, hand fast and brutal on his own dick, to the extent that Sohinki doesn’t know if it’s really working or if Lasercorn is just really good at masturbating. “You’re so,” Lasercorn grunts, and then bites off his own words.

Sohinki doesn’t understand how any of this could be turning Lasercorn on. He’s literally just standing there, and they’re no longer even touching, Lasercorn’s hand already off him when Lasercorn was getting his dick out. But then Lasercorn grunts, “Can I,” moving closer and closer, too close, one arm already around Sohinki’s shoulder when Sohinki breathes, “Yeah,” without really knowing what he agreed to. He should have guessed though, because Lasercorn’s nose immediately goes for his neck, sniffing even more aggressively than he did before now that Sohinki actually gave him permission.

Lasercorn’s exhale is shaky, but his arm tightens around Sohinki’s back.

It is only natural then, to smell Lasercorn in return. Near impossible not to, really, with all of his other senses already so full of Lasercorn, overloaded with Lasercorn’s heat and weight falling on his chest, Lasercorn’s harsh breaths in his ear, wet and hushed sounds from somewhere between their bodies, trying to be quiet because they are right at the door, they are not alone, and they don’t have all the time in the world. Maybe all Sohinki will ever have of Lasercorn is this, musky smell of dick, deep and strangely sweet scent of sweat dripping from Lasercorn’s jaw, and not-sex in some unfamiliar apartment a hundred miles away from where they live.

“You smell so good,” Lasercorn tells him.

Sohinki closes his eyes. He doesn’t want to look and accidentally stare at Lasercorn’s dick, which will make him _want_ things, but the sounds of Lasercorn working his dick are even more obscene when Sohinki can’t see. “You’re really doing it,” he says nonsensically.

“That’s the idea. God, why do you smell so good?”

“You’re really fixated on that, but I smell like coffee.”

Right then Lasercorn’s knuckles graze Sohinki’s dick on their way up. Sohinki loses himself a little. Can’t even tell what kind of sound he made, but it must have been bad, because Lasercorn says, “I can. I mean, I can help you too.”

Lasercorn’s other hand moves down from Sohinki’s back, down, down to his hip. A searing, almost painful grip, his hips feeling slender and bony under Lasercorn’s big hand. Sohinki has wanted that hand on him so many times before. One time they were playing some Xbox game and passing the controller back and forth, Lasercorn’s hand almost wrapping around his when he hands the controller over, and Sohinki must have seen their hands close together before, but suddenly the contrast between Lasercorn’s big, beefy hand and Sohinki’s long, thin fingers just floored him, bowled him over with lust. Sohinki never imagined he would say no if Lasercorn asked if he could touch him.

“That would probably be cheating,” Sohinki says.

Lasercorn shakes his head a little, his hair brushing and tickling against Sohinki’s neck. “So you _are_ dating Wes.”

“Yeah.”

“Figures. You two look good together.”

Sohinki doesn’t look good together with Wes. _Mari_ , or even Anthony would look good together with Wes, if only by the virtue of the fact that out of everyone in Smosh Games only the three of them could pull off a leather jacket.

“Don’t,” Sohinki says. “Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m not! I just. Why would anything make you less aloof and unattainable?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Sohinki isn’t aloof. He is extremely easy, as evidenced by the fact that he is letting Lasercorn do this right now. Flatter him, pay attention to him, make him laugh. If someone only tried Sohinki would be theirs.

“Shhh. I’m close,” Lasercorn says. “Jesus Christ I want to come on your face.”

“Oh my god,” he says. _That_ would definitely be cheating. Kinda hot, and definitely cheating. “But don’t do that, though?”

“Say it.”

“What?”

Lasercorn’s breath is hot and quick on his neck. “Say what you don’t want me to do.”

Sohinki can’t think. He wants to hold onto something before he is completely untethered. His hands come up and clutch at Lasercorn’s hoodie, finding comfort in all the wrong places.

Lasercorn pulls himself up off of Sohinki’s neck and looks at Sohinki in the eyes. “Say it.”

Sohinki wants to hide from that kind of intensity, but he can’t look away, because apparently Sohinki is shameless and always wants Lasercorn’s attention.

“Don’t, uh,” Sohinki hears his voice break. “Don’t come on my face.”

“Oh my god,” Lasercorn says, and comes. Not on his face, just like he asked.

Lasercorn growls when he does it, and Sohinki thinks hysterically that he now knows what Lasercorn sounds like and what kind of face Lasercorn makes when he orgasms. Eyes blown wide. Nose flared. Gritting his teeth. A picture almost not of pleasure but of pain. All of it for Sohinki, and he aches with want.

For a long minute after Lasercorn is still looking at Sohinki, his hand coming up to Sohinki’s face and his fingers tracing Sohinki’s jaw, as if to memorize it, as if Sohinki will not be the only one to remember this for the rest of his life. And when Sohinki glances down there is a lot of come between them, some of it still sluggishly twitching out of Lasercorn’s dick, some already fallen to the floor. Sohinki resists the instinct to drop to his knees and have a taste, to see if the come is still hot, to see if Lasercorn’s dick is as smooth as it looks, to be able to gag on the smell of Lasercorn, already everywhere around him now, couldn’t escape it if he wanted to.

“Napkin,” Lasercorn says suddenly, snapping out of it. “We have to—”

“Nnrrrg.”

“Right.” Lasercorn pushes off of Sohinki and disappears into the bathroom. Sohinki takes a few seconds to breathe and search the ceiling for strength, for the meaning of life, for some explanation for why God is so cruel and would test him like this. He’s not exactly been a model Jew, what with all the bacon eating, but this has been a flagrantly disproportionate test of his good character and fidelity.

Lasercorn comes out of the bathroom already zipped up and perfectly presentable if you don’t count the roll of toilet paper in his hands and the fact that he is wiping up the floor and a bit of come that’s gotten on Sohinki’s hoodie. Sohinki still hasn’t moved.

“Er,” Lasercorn says. “Do you really not want me to…”

“Yes,” Sohinki decides. “Watch the door for me.”

“What? Are you gonna take care of it in there?”

Sohinki glares at him. “No, I’m gonna take a cold shower and you have to watch the door because it’s weird that I’m not going back to my own room.”

“Oh.”

A shower would also have the benefit of letting Sohinki see if he looks as dazed as he feels and wash away any stray. Stuff. Anyway Sohinki almost always takes a shower after sex, though he tries not to think about any implication therein.

“Actually,” Sohinki says. He almost forgot. “Did you, er. Did you come to any conclusion?”

“What?”

“ _Have you decided whether or not you’re attracted to men_?”

Lasercorn scratches his chin. “Oh. You know what, I actually don’t know yet.”

“After all that?” Sohinki laughs a little. Christ, it was really all just him ben out of shape.

“Well, I’m probably attracted to men at least a little.” Lasercorn shrugs, self-conscious. “It’s just that I still don’t know what to do about it.”

“Sure,” Sohinki says.

“Go take your shower,” Lasercorn nudges him. “I’ll be here when you get back.”

***

There is a new equilibrium after the trip. Without Sohinki knowing it, everything has changed. He can’t pinpoint something either of them said or did, but everything since is tinged with their new knowledge, and heightened with a sharp awareness that there are often three men who are at least a little attracted to other men in the same room. He could swear that Lasercorn watches him more often, laughs at his jokes more readily, tries to get him to do more suggestive stuff, but that could just be the years long sexual frustration talking. At times, in defiance of the new world order, Sohinki can half convince himself that he made it all up in his head, that Lasercorn never masturbated in front of him or caught him and Wes kissing in a parking lot in San Diego. This theory would have to ignore inconvenient data points where Wes would be falling asleep on Sohinki’s shoulder in the office and Lasercorn would walk in without a comment, because he knew. He knows.

It is as if they are both waiting for something to come along and change the world as they know it again, but Sohinki certainly isn’t going to be the catalyst for it, and he certainly isn’t going to ask Lasercorn if he has like, finally decided he was bi. What if the answer is no? What if the answer is yes and it’s yes because Lasercorn has found himself a boyfriend? Which doesn’t have anything to do with Sohinki, obviously, because he’s already in a relationship, except for the fact that it would be completely devastating.

Maybe the new equilibrium also has an echo effect on the others in the office, because July comes around and Mari wants to do another Maricraft Bachelorette series, but this time, for unfathomable reasons, she plans to cast Sohinki as the Bachelor, but gay.

In the planning meeting, which is what the seven or eight of them sprawled over bean bag chairs and messing with their own phones is called on Matt Raub’s calendar, Sohinki jabs his finger for emphasis and says, “Mari, and I can’t emphasize this enough, what the fuck.”

“Wes can’t be the bachelor because he’s too nice. You are the next prettiest option.”

Lasercorn betrays Sohinki in a naked bid for personal gain. “I can’t do it either. The serial killer shtick doesn’t work without me being able to walk around doing my own stuff.”

“Flitz,” Sohinki says desperately. “Flitz is perfect for it.”

Flitz doesn’t even look up. “I don’t want to though?”

“That’s not a reason!”

But then Joven says, bizarrely, “No no, it has to be Sohinki. If it was Sohinki then it would actually be believable.”

Mari claps her hands. “I kind of see it. I totally see it.”

“What they mean is that you’re kinda like a girl,” Lasercorn says unkindly.

“Nonononono,” Sohinki raises his voice, for the first time with a sinking feeling that he might really have to play the bachelor. “No. I already know what’s going to happen. Here’s how it’s going to go. Last time the joke was that no one in the game actually wanted Mari while in real life she’s the hot girl in a group of guys, so this time the joke will be that everybody wants to get with me because in real life no one actually wants to be my friend. You’re all going to make references to Sohinkism or something, and the punch line will be that by the end everyone would rather be single than be with me.”

Mari laughs. “Sohin, that’s the opposite of what we _just_ said.”

Wes raises his hand for permission to speak. “I promise I’ll be weirdly serious about winning.”

Oh god. Well, at least Wes being serious about it might make him not want to kill himself afterward.

“You’re a given,” Sohinki says instead. “You’re always too invested in playing the game how it’s meant to be played.”

“Stop saying that like it’s a bad thing.”

“Hey look,” Joven says. “I promise I’ll make an effort too. That’s at least two people and last time even Mari only had four. We can do like a truncated series or something.”

“Then it’s settled,” Mari says quickly. “We’ll have a week to set it up and then Sohinki’s gonna be the bachelor. Yay. Meeting adjourned. Good work everyone.”

“I don’t think so,” Sohinki yells, panicked. “If we do this I have conditions.”

“Oh, you’re going to do it?” Lasercorn asks.

“Yeah?” Mari says, cautiously optimistic.

“One, we’re not going to pussy out like last time and make me choose everybody. There’s going to be a winner at the end.”

Sohinki involuntarily glances at Wes to find Wes looking back at him, his expression not surprised, but curious and wondering. Sohinki agreeing to do this will mean nothing if he’s not able to pick Wes, because maybe by picking Wes to win a meaningless dating game he could get away with never coming out of the closet for “no reason whatsoever, I can’t believe it, _that’s_ why you’re refusing to tell anyone we’re dating? That makes no sense.”

“Done,” Mari says.

“What?” Flitz looks up, finally concerned. “You’re not gonna pick me, right? I know we have strangely similar tastes and all—”

“Two, I get to play the challenges along with everyone else.”

“What? No,” Joven says. “That’ll be weird. You might win them all.”

Mari agrees. “Then it’ll just be Survivor.”

“Would I be going out with someone who couldn’t beat me? I don’t think so.”

“Yeah, that’s why. It couldn’t be that you just want to win all the time.”

Mari throws her hands up. “If you win then who would you even go on a date with?”

“Who cares? We’ll think of something.” And by _something_ Sohinki means _double elimination_. “Do we have a deal or not?”

Lasercorn seems to still be stuck on the fact that Sohinki agreed. “But you never let yourself be pressured into doing something you don’t want to do. Sohinki, do you actually want to be the Bachelorette?”

“Shut up,” Mari hisses to Lasercorn. “Shut up shut up shut up. He already said yes.”

“Sohinki, do you _want_ to more ‘Fake and gay’ comments?”

Mari punches Lasercorn in the arm. Hard. “Do _you_ wanna do it?”

“No! I want Joven to do it.”

“Nope,” Joven says. “It wouldn’t be believable! None of you can believible—believably pretend to want to date me.”

“It doesn’t have to be believable. It can be a farce, and then we can all try to kill Joven in different ways.”

At that point Mari attempts to kill Lasercorn in real life, so Sohinki makes his exit. Mari was always too invested in making the rest of them do gay stuff, probably as a self-defense mechanism for how creepy Joven and Flitz can get around her. Sohinki feels a bit guilty for now and again hitting on her and sailing the ole Marhinki Express, but at least he hasn’t openly panted after her feet like Joven did or complimented her butt anytime he had an excuse to, like Flitz does. Making Mari snaggletoothed ugly last time on Maricraft was also mainly to curb the potential creepiness, which will likely be cranked up to profound, Kevin Spacey levels this time around because all of them were born into that last batch of millennials who still thought rapey gay jokes were funny. So many bars of soap will drop on the floor, he just knows it.

But Wes doesn’t make any of those jokes, which is why he seems so much younger than the rest of them even though he’s practically Sohinki’s age. He’s not that funny either, but _that’s_ okay. After spending so much time around petty, selfish, superficially charming people in the seventh circle of hell that is LA, Sohinki has learned to appreciate earnest and wholesome bois who make him pancakes in the morning and are at least willing to learn to play Dota 2.

“That would probably be my real requirement if I ever am on one of those shows,” Sohinki tells Wes later, when they are out getting coffee and muffins to bring back for everyone else.

“That he has to play Dota with you?”

“No. That he can tolerate me spending more time playing Dota than on dates with him.”

“Whoa,” Wes laughs. “I don’t know about _that_.”

“Too bad. You’re already going to win.”

Wes grins. His hand moves across the table to hold Sohinki’s fingers, loose, curious, and warm.

“You promise you’ll pick me in the end?”

Sohinki was right about the little things making Wes happy. He’d probably have to endure weirdly personal jabs from the others as the series goes along, but it might be worth it, in the end, to make Wes glow at him like this.

“You’d have to buy my affections with a lot of things though. Like an enchanted sword and any diamond you acquire in the game,” Sohinki says, remembering all of his embarrassing gifts last time to Mari. He would have revenge soon enough.

“I was going to do that anyway. Remember how I also gave you a ton of stuff in GTA when we weren’t even dating?”

“Yes,” Sohinki bats his eyes at Wes. “That was good. Also, we did end up going on a date together and you drove me around to kill a guy.”

Wes ducks his head. “And now we’re going to go on a date in Minecraft. Wouldn’t it be amazing if I won every single challenge and we went on a date every time?”

“Well, your competition is Joven, so.”

“And Lasercorn,” Wes adds darkly.

As far as Sohinki can tell, Wes doesn’t know what happened between him and Lasercorn in San Diego. Not that what happened means anything, but Wes would probably be even more on edge about Sohinki and Lasercorn spending time together than he is now, because Sohinki and Lasercorn still hang out a lot, sometimes playing Magic together and sometimes going to the gym. If they suddenly stopped doing those stuff it would actually be super weird and everyone would ask them if they were fighting, which they literally never do, because Lasercorn is chill as fuck. And anyway, Sohinki would never stop hanging out with his friends because a guy he was dating was jealous. Like, he remembers at least one of his exes being jealous over Mari of all people, even after repeated reassurances from Sohinki that he was, in fact, a gay.

Mainly, there’s no good way to tell Wes something like, _Lasercorn jerked off in front of me, but it’s okay since I didn’t do anything myself, and that makes it even below friendly mutual masturbation stuff, which everyone knows doesn’t really count as sex_.

Sohinki takes the easy way out. “Lasercorn would just be trying to kill me,” he says.

Which turns out to not be true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am having just so much fun writing this fic that it almost doesn't matter that no one reads it lol


	3. Hypothesis #3: Video games are an imperfect metaphor for real life

Lasercorn is still a third-rate serial killer in the second season of Maricraft Bachelorette as he cannot plausibly pretend to be anything else, and Sohinki was right at first, because in the first few episodes at least Lasercorn does make several attempts on his life. Apparently, Lasercorn’s motivation for being on the show is “having a taste for Jewish men,” which is fucked up enough without the bad Italian accent and repeated Mussolini quotations.

And because Sohinki doesn’t have time to come up with another offensive foreign accent, he plays a borderline anti-Semitic version of himself: a Jewish lawyer, who’s looking to marry up, and who has mysterious, shadowy connections with the show producers. _I love expensive gifts_ , he says to his producer, which isn’t even a lie. Sohinki adores gifts and doesn’t understand why people don’t give him _more_ gifts instead of cash or something, because, unlike someone whose last name rhymes with _ingrate_ _calamari_ , he is a great gift recipient.

“I can’t believe she didn’t even remember who gave her the diamond sword,” he fumes.

His producer coughs. “That’s not…uh, that’s not canon. I mean, you guys were playing different characters.”

“Oh yeah,” he says. “Mari plays a different ungrateful character now.”

“Jesus Christ,” Joven says feelingly from across the room. In theory Joven shouldn’t even be able to participate in Sohinki’s talking head, but Sohinki already knows that they’ll keep it in anyway. There’s an extremely incriminating video montage waiting to happen of Sohinki and Joven just losing it over each other’s mean and terrible jokes while no one else joins in.

And Mari, well, she doesn’t look any different from her character last time, but she’s supposed to be an insensitive, condescending type who will order Sohinki’s food for him and expect him to be a stay-at-home spouse.

“How will you support your family?” their producer asks.

“I live in a trailer park,” Mari slurs in her best Appalachian accent. “Doesn’t take much to stay there.”

Meanwhile, Flitz plays a wealthy older man who is looking to trade up from his previous trophy wife, and is near-sighted enough to think Sohinki’s character is a girl. Joven has been scorned by women all of his life and wants to try dating a guy for a change, and Wes, per their pre-show plotting, is a multilevel marketing Facebook guy who constantly gifts Sohinki bullshit Amway products.

“My personal life has been a series of tragedies actually,” Wes tells Sohinki when they first sit down together. “I have lost so many friends who committed suicide for going into debt.”

“Wow,” Flitz says.

“He’s raising awareness,” Sohinki shouts.

Sohinki tries not to play favorites at first though. While Wes begins plying him with natural health potions right out of the gate, Joven does accidentally save him once from Lasercorn’s arrow trap. How Lasercorn managed to get all the materials for a trap on the first day no one knows.

“I should probably eliminate the psycho right away,” Sohinki tells them at the rose ceremony. “But I straight up can’t have a woman stealing attention from all the men here. You might have noticed we already replaced all the hot maids with decrepit old butlers.”

“Bitch,” Mari shouts. “You aren’t supposed to still hold a grudge from the last time.”

“You shouldn’t have said any of the things you said then.”

“You know,” Joven says, “you just eliminated the one other person who might have taken this seriously.”

Sohinki pretends ignorance. “What do you mean? Everyone is taking this seriously. Isn’t that right Lasercorn?”

“Yeah. That means I get to stay in the competition right?”

“For one more episode,” Sohinki assures him.

Sohinki and Wes decide to ramp up the favoritism next. Instead of engaging in mischiefs and shenanigans with the others, Wes spends all of his time minecrafting and giving Sohinki stuff, which Sohinki exaggeratedly fawns over. Joven, bless his heart, does attempt to belatedly give Sohinki some resources, but he was never going to beat Wes at this game.

“This is bullshit,” Joven says in a “secret” meeting with Lasercorn and Flitz. “Wes is just bribing his way to victory.”

“I would have brought my yacht,” Flitz says, “but the producer told me I couldn’t do it.”

Lasercorn has apparently spent too much time making traps and not enough time playing the meta game. “I didn’t know this was the game,” he throws his blocky hands up. “I would have been able to lure him to secluded locations with promises of gifts a long time ago. Excuse me.”

But every time Lasercorn calls Sohinki over somewhere with a trap he’d just set up, Wes would thwart him by dangling an even bigger present in front of Sohinki, or by saying he wanted to come with.

“I want only you to see the gift though,” Lasercorn says, through in-real-life gritted teeth.

“I’d hate to leave Wes behind, especially since he’s been so generous,” Sohinki says, trying the best he knows how to be coy.

“This is rigged,” Joven says, correctly diagnosing the problem. “We got a Jew and a guy who has diamond swords falling out of his ass.”

“How the hell do I get you to come to this thing alone then?” Lasercorn jabs at some trees in the distance where there is clearly some lava making its way down from the top.

“You could win a date,” Wes says, amused. He won the first challenge already, and took Sohinki to an Amway meeting where Sohinki pretended to be very impressed with all the “entrepreneurship” on display.

“I will hurt you,” Lasercorn tells Wes seriously.

The next challenge is a race on the water. Wes looks like he’s about to win until Lasercorn pulls out flaming arrows and sinks Wes’s boat. There’s indignant squawking and accusations of cheating from all sides until their producer decides that the third-place finish should be declared winner. Who is Joven. Both Lasercorn and Wes are surprisingly okay with the result.

“It’s Joven,” says Wes, by way of explanation.

“It’s not Wes,” is Lasercorn’s reply. “Wes can go to hell.”

“Fuck you too,” Wes mutters.

“Sohinki,” Joven yelps. “A minute.”

“What?”

“A minute outside,” Joven says urgently, and drags him out of the office. In a fit of paranoia, Joven also switches off their mikes.

Sohinki lets Joven grope for his mike, but he pushes Joven back to a respectable distance when he’s done. “What the fuck are you doing? We’re literally in the middle of a recording.”

“I’m a little scared. Aren’t you a little scared?”

Sohinki crosses his arms.

“Lasercorn and Wes are being too scary,” Joven hisses. “Didn’t you feel like they’re being scary?”

Oh. Joven actually has very good survival instincts, and he does know Lasercorn and Wes well enough to distinguish when they’re being playfully antagonistic as opposed to now, when they’re just actively hostile toward each other.

“I think Lasercorn is frustrated that he keeps losing, and Wes is ticked off because Lasercorn sabotaged him for no reason,” Sohinki says slowly. “But it does feel a little too tense for it to be just that.”

“Did you see Wes after Lasercorn set his boat on fire? He’d usually brush it off but that time he just started going after Lasercorn until he killed him.”

“Yeah. I don’t even know if we are gonna be able to use that in the video.”

“It’s you and me who are usually angry. Lasercorn and Wes are never this angry when we record. I didn’t even know they could be scary like that.”

Sohinki looks away. “You’re just very impressionable Joven.”

“Could you just,” Joven looks around quickly to make sure they’re still alone. “Could you just pick both of them to move on this time? I know you have a plan for who’s going to be the final winner but I feel like they might stab each other if one wins and the other doesn’t. I mean, it’s just this time, and you can still pick whoever that’d be funniest at the end.”

The bottom of Sohinki’s stomach drops out. He should have eliminated Lasercorn first. This wouldn’t have been an issue if he’d just eliminated Lasercorn in the last episode like everyone thought he would. Now it just feels like he’s intentionally keeping both Wes and Lasercorn around for his harem, like he gets some sick pleasure out of watching them fight it out.

The more this goes on, the worse what happened in San Diego seems, in retrospect.

Sohinki needs to eliminate Lasercorn in the next episode. He can’t let it come down to a decision between Wes and Lasercorn like this, because it would seem like he’s really choosing, while in reality he has no right.

But for this round, he needs to eliminate Flitz.

“Flitz does seem very well set up,” Sohinki tells everyone at the rose ceremony. “I’ve seen the prenup though, and it gives me nothing to work with.”

 _I didn’t want to piss Lasercorn off and ruin the video_ , he texts Wes. _He’ll go next time_.

Wes doesn’t respond. Joven and Sohinki go on a “date” where they improv Joven’s romantic history, and actually have a lot of fun.

That lasts for about twenty-five minutes until their next challenge, when disaster strikes, because it’s a bastardized version of Cards Against Humanity with Minecraft notes and only Sohinki as the judge. The game seems exciting at first until Sohinki remembers that he always picks Lasercorn’s answers in these games and is the main reason Lasercorn always wins. He gives Lasercorn two rounds before he manages to pick Flitz, and then Joven, and then Mari. When Lasercorn wins a third and final round, he can’t do anything but laugh helplessly. There are three distinct and equally horrible possibilities: 1, Lasercorn just knows him that well. 2, Lasercorn is just that funny. Or 3, Sohinki just basically likes Lasercorn that much.

To be fair, they already knew that Wes would probably lose, but Sohinki was hoping to get Joven again, or maybe even Mari, who wouldn’t yell, “Eat a dick, Wes,” when they win.

“Yeah, you win a game that doesn’t require beating me at Minecraft,” Wes says.

“It just requires being picked by Sohinki.”

“Yeah.” Wes doesn’t look away from his screen, and is extraordinarily still. “Let’s see who Sohinki picks.”

Before they can do the rose ceremony though, and before Sohinki can slit his own wrist, he and Lasercorn have to go on a “date.” Sohinki makes a show of putting on the armor Wes gave him and manages to dodge a bunch of the traps in the basement with Lasercorn laughing manically up above. And he is in the middle of a lava stream when the realization hits him, the simple and obvious fact of what he needs to do to get himself out of the mess he’s made. He needs to resolve this storyline with Lasercorn right now. He needs to let Lasercorn kill him.

It doesn’t take much acting, only a few well-placed motherfuckers, some creative falling, and a badly executed last minute double suicide attempt and he has Lasercorn practically putty in his hands, whooping with joy and beaming with the exhilaration of a successful homicide. Sohinki doesn’t dare look at Wes, but pretty much everyone else is infected with the sheer mania of Lasercorn’s ecstatic celebration.

“You finally got someone with the lava,” Joven laughs. “That’s a beautiful kill.”

“That’s a top tier kill,” Flitz agrees.

“And it’s Sohinks too,” Mari says.

Wes finally texts him back afterwards. It’s just a smiley face, but Sohinki has never felt such enormous relief. The only thing on par with it was way back in grade school when he almost but didn’t get caught cheating on a test. Like he got away with something he shouldn’t have done.

The rose ceremony is easy after that. Lasercorn won the challenge but also killed him. Sohinki takes the opportunity to formally apologize to Mari and Flitz who he should never have eliminated before someone he was 90% sure was a serial killer. And at the end Wes and Joven move on. Easy.

Sohinki keeps coasting on his own genius into the break. They’ve done three episodes thus far, and after that they’ve only got the last episode and some talking heads that production thinks they might need. Lasercorn bounces up to him in the kitchen and grins.

“That was fun,” Lasercorn says. “Wasn’t it fun?”

“Yes, you killed me, I know, haha,” Sohinki says. “But it was a lot of fun.”

“I forgot how well we work together. Maybe we do need to bring Backseat Gaming back.”

Sohinki swallows. “You’re getting really close.”

He doesn’t feel like such a genius anymore.

“I know,” Lasercorn says. “It’s because I’m thinking about kissing you.”

“Oh,” Sohinki says.

So this is devastating too.

“I kept thinking about that time in San Diego,” Lasercorn continues. “And I kept regretting that we didn’t kiss.”

Sohinki thought they weren’t talking about San Diego! He’s not prepared. But there is really nothing to say except the obvious.

“I’m dating Wes,” he says.

“I know.” Lasercorn scratches his chin. Steps even closer. “You were dating Wes, and you still let me do that. I think it means I have a chance.”

“With me.”

“Yes,” Lasercorn clarifies. “With you. Can I kiss you now?”

“No,” Sohinki decides. “Absolutely not.”

Lasercorn laughs, self-deprecating, and steps back. “Worth a try.”

“Not really.”

“You almost said yes!”

“I think you’ll find I said ‘absolutely not’.”

“You know,” Lasercorn says, ruining his life. “I’ll have to tell Wes.”

“About that?” Sohinki nearly screeches. He pokes his head out of the room to see if anyone can overhear. He’d just thought he could finally breathe again.

Lasercorn grimaces. “No. About the fact that I’m going to try to break you two up.”

Sohinki snaps his head back, wanting to see Lasercorn’s eyes, confirming that he isn’t joking. Lasercorn only looks grimly determined, almost like he’s preparing for protracted war.

“You’re talking about trying to break up two of your best friends,” Sohinki says.

“I don’t want to go about this behind Wes’s back. At least this way I’ll be upfront.”

“Those are not your only options. You could also try _not_ breaking us up.”

“But I think we should be together,” Lasercorn says simply. “And I think you _know_ we should be together. Actually, _why_ are you dating Wes? You never used to like Wes that much, not more than me or anyone else. You even have more in common with _Flitz_.”

Sohinki’s face heats.

“Flitz isn’t attracted to men.”

“So you’re dating Wes just because he’s gay?”

“Wes is bi.”

“Whatever,” Lasercorn snaps. “Wes isn’t funny and he’s always doing boring stuff. He doesn’t even make you laugh.”

“Joven is funnier,” Sohinki ticks off his fingers. “Joven is always doing dumb but exciting stuff, and Joven makes me laugh. All the same I’d rather not date Joven, thank you.”

Lasercorn crosses his arms. “You know what I mean.”

“Do you want me to say it?” Sohinki hisses. “Wes is hot. He asked me out. I said yes.”

“Wow.”

“He’s nice,” Sohinki mutters. “Small, thoughtful things make him happy. He’s easy-going and can’t hold a grudge. He’s a better person than I’ve ever been.”

Lasercorn looks away.

“I don’t know what he’s doing with me really. Well, admittedly I am very cool and good at video games, but that shouldn’t have been enough.”

Lasercorn rolls his eyes. “You’re also tiny. For a guy you’re tiny, and you seem like you’re the perfect size. I mean, that’s why I said you two looked good together, because Wes is enormous, and you’re you.”

Sohinki feels his flush spread to his chest. He doesn’t work out as much as every other person in LA, so his body type can charitably be described as “non-threatening,” but the upside is how well he fits into men’s arms. Was it what Lasercorn meant, when he said he couldn’t stop thinking about the way Sohinki looked? Has Lasercorn been thinking about the way Sohinki would fit into his arms?

Lasercorn sighs. “We could be so good together.”

“It’s bad timing,” Sohinki says, allowing himself to acknowledge it. “Plenty of people just have bad timing.”

“I’m not going to let something like bad timing stop me.”

Sohinki starts walking back to the office.

“You’re still going to tell Wes?”

“I’m going to _apologize_ to Wes.”

“It’s not going to go well.”

“Yeah, for me,” Lasercorn huffs. “Especially since you’re still going to pick him.”

Sohinki grabs Lasercorn’s arm, stopping both of them. “I am not going to do any _picking_. Wes and I are already going out. I have no right to pick.”

“I know,” Lasercorn whispers. “You’re starting to feel guilty about what happened in San Diego, aren’t you?”

Lasercorn, when he is not even trying, can still read Sohinki like a book.

“Shut up,” Sohinki says, letting go.

“You didn’t do anything wrong. I did.”

“It wasn’t wrong, period. I was just helping you out.”

“Well, it was wrong because I had ulterior motives,” Lasercorn says easily, as if he didn’t just change everything all over again.

“You what?”

But they are already at the door to the office.

“Wes,” Lasercorn says, raising his voice to get Wes’s attention. “Can I talk to you later?”

***

It doesn’t go well.

Wes has a question remarkably similar to the one Sohinki already asked.

“You’re telling me you’re plotting to break up two of your closest friends, who are in a happy relationship.”

“That’s why I said I was sorry,” Lasercorn says.

“So, when you found out that Sohinki and I were dating, instead of supporting us or rooting for us, you want to break us up?”

“Yeah,” Lasercorn says, figuring Wes would find more and more terrible ways to phrase it if he didn’t. “Sorry.”

Ludicrously, they’re in the stairwell again because no one in the office has left. Every sound they make echoes discordantly up and down the floors. Lasercorn has his back against the door, partly to stop people from coming in, partly because Wes is looming over him. Sohinki is holding on to Wes’s arm, to steady himself or to hold Wes back, he doesn’t know, but Wes is thrumming under his hands, his muscles tense, alive, almost vibrating with energy.

“And all this, just because you thought you and Sohinki, quote, should be together, unquote.”

“I mean—”

“I know we all have a running joke where you’re unhinged but this is actually psychotic.”

“It’s not just because I thought Sohinki and I should be together!” Lasercorn says loudly. “What I meant was,” and then Lasercorn stops himself.

Wes glares. “What?”

Lasercorn buries his face in his hands, realizes what he’s doing and stops. “What I meant by that was.” Lasercorn looks away. “I love Sohinki, and I would do much worse than this to be together with him.”

“Yeah, that’s _less_ psychotic,” Sohinki says. No one pays him attention.

“You know what’s funny?” Wes says. “You had like four years where you knew him before I did to make a move. And he was single pretty much the entire time.”

Sohinki winces.

“That was.” Lasercorn laughs bitterly. “That was bad timing.”

“I assume Sohinki’s already told you no.”

“The exact word was ‘Absolutely not.’”

“Okay,” Wes says. Sohinki thinks he can hear some relief in Wes’s voice. “There’s your answer.”

Wes doesn’t wait for Lasercorn to respond. He grabs Sohinki’s hand and pushes past Lasercorn out of the stairwell. To his credit, Sohinki doesn’t look back.

“Where are we going?” Sohinki asks.

Wes stops.

“Let’s go back to my place,” Sohinki says, tugging on Wes’s hand. “Come on. I’ll drive.”

“You’re very calm about this,” Wes says, but he does follow Sohinki to the parking lot.

“Well, we both kinda suspected, and I had ten whole minutes of warning more than you did.”

“You mean _I_ suspected it and _you_ kept saying that I overreacted to Lasercorn blatantly trying to smell you everywhere we go.”

“Uh, that’s not exactly what I said.” Sohinki’s heart speeds up. Maybe he’s not getting out of this unscathed. “Goddammit, where is that fucking car?” he mutters.

“None of us came off well back there, you know.”

“There it is,” Sohinki says.

He can feel Wes’s frustration radiating off of him from his back, but he has nothing to defend himself with, because everything would make it look worse than it does now.

When they are putting on their seatbelts, Sohinki finally cracks. “You know, I was just broadly hoping that things would stay the same.”

He wants to keep dating Wes and to stay friends with Lasercorn. He doesn’t want to think about what San Diego would mean if they both had feelings that weren’t platonic. He wants his life to be simple again and his problems to just go away. He wants Wes and Lasercorn to somehow sort it out between themselves, maybe lock themselves in a room and just have at each other with their bare fists, and when they emerge all of this will have been put behind them.

Wes huffs. “That’s very self-serving logic.”

“That’s me,” Sohinki reminds him. “You signed up for it buddy.”

“Have I?” And miraculously Sohinki can hear a smile in Wes’s voice, so he bravely leans over and kisses the corner of Wes’s lips.

Wes grabs him and makes him stay, holding him upright when the seatbelt digs into his chest and he slips.

“I remember that time you practiced your aim on Joven,” Wes says, apropos of nothing. “And then somehow you got mad when Joven tried to fight back? That was, I don’t know, the most transparently self-serving thing I’ve seen, but it was unreasonable stuff like that that made you seem like a princess, and made me want to give you everything, if only you asked.”

“What if I asked you for forgiveness,” Sohinki says.

Wes lets him go. “That’s not something I need to forgive you for. It’s mostly Lasercorn being weird and slightly sociopathic.”

And Sohinki having unresolved feelings, but Wes is probably not ready for that yet.

“Thanks anyway,” Sohinki says, and starts the car.

The problem remains of how to deal with Lasercorn, now that Wes has dashed his hopes for the “ignore what’s happening until things return to normal” plan. Sohinki can consent to no longer going to the gym together, but he is still not going to stop being Lasercorn’s friend, no matter how much of a sociopath Lasercorn might be. That’s non-negotiable.

“We can negotiate it later,” Wes says, peeved.

***

It is not lost on either of them that out of Wes, Lasercorn and Sohinki, only Lasercorn has admitted to being in love. Sohinki doesn’t really believe him, but he said it, and that has to count for something.


	4. Hypothesis #4: Even a broken clock

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm late because Kollok 1991 has taken over my life, oh my god. It's an rpg show where Sohinki plays the worst failson who's of course an MMA guy with a daddy complex. I wish Smosh had played more tabletop games lol.

True to his words, Lasercorn starts aggressively but incompetently trying to break Wes and Sohinki up. It quickly becomes clear that Lasercorn has no actual talent for subterfuge or sowing discord, but he does inadvertently and by blunt force manage to drive a wedge between them by blatantly hitting on Sohinki in front of everyone while Sohinki pretends not to notice.

He wonders if this is how Mari always feels, some combination of oddly flattered and vaguely uncomfortable, whenever a guy makes a passing reference to her body or to the fact that he wouldn’t mind it if they hooked up. And Lasercorn is no Joven or Flitz; he isn’t creepy, and the attention isn’t exactly unwelcome, and anyway the comparison is all wrong because Mari gets it constantly, from most guys she works with, whereas the attention Sohinki gets is just from one L-Corn. But maybe it’s the same the low-level awareness of being wanted, sexually, romantically, and of special treatment being given to him solely because someone has a crush… It’s a little sick and a little thrilling at the same time, so Sohinki does his best to not acknowledge it in any shape or form. Not when Lasercorn repeatedly offers to hold his hand, not when Lasercorn tries to put him on his lap, and not when Lasercorn for a video tells Sohinki to put a vibrator up his ass while Lasercorn controls the power. Sohinki has read hentai with that exact plot, so he politely declines.

Mari finds him later, skulking around the kitchen to avoid Wes, who wants to renegotiate the Lasercorn issue again.

“He wouldn’t have gotten away with it if it’d been me,” she says. “That would have been money in the Creepichu jar.”

Is Mari trying to white knight him? Is this how it feels to be white knighted? This is already unbearable, even without Mari knowing he’s gay.

“I didn’t mind it,” he says.

“You said it was gross!”

“It’s one of those, you know, homosocial interactions between men.”

“Does ‘homosocial interaction’ mean flirting?”

“It means that it’s not sexual! It’s just _normal_ friendship stuff that’s _normal_ if you’re really close friends.”

“Does ‘homosocial’ mean light BDSM?”

“Alright,” Sohinki says, and begins beating his retreat. “I see you’re not listening, that’s fine.”

Mari stops him from leaving. “No, look. I’m telling you that if you want him to stop, we can tell him to stop.”

“Oh my god,” Sohinki says faintly. “You _are_ trying to white knight me.”

All of this without saying Lasercorn’s name out loud too.

Mari is frustrated now. Her hair is very still when she’s frustrated. “It’s not a joke.”

“No, it’s not, but I don’t need you to do anything.”

“You know, if it gets any more blatant we’re going to have to acknowledge it on air. Like, the next time he tries to smell you we might not be able to cut around it.”

“Do that,” Sohinki says menacingly, meaning _Do that, and I’ll cut you_. Predictably, Mari isn’t intimidated.

She does move out of his way though, so he runs.

***

This is getting really bad, if the others are finally taking notice. It doesn’t help that Lasercorn is deliberately doing all of the creepy stuff when the others are watching, because when they’re alone Sohinki can just tell him to fuck off, but when everyone else is there Sohinki has to pretend deaf dumb and blind. Lasercorn can be groping him with the excuse of having a blindfold on and he still has to sit there and act like Wes isn’t staring daggers. And Lasercorn can be giving him completely excessive but well-deserved compliments on his butt while Flitz and Joven are weirded out and Wes is seething, and he has to search deep within himself to answer the question of, how would Sohinki take the compliments if he wasn’t gay and didn’t have feelings, and instead was just your regular everyday narcissistic guy?

“You slut,” Joven says after witnessing that going down. “You just really like compliments huh?”

“That one goes into the books,” Sohinki says. “That was the first time someone other than me has given myself a compliment.”

Flitz is still regarding Lasercorn suspiciously. No one is usually this nice to Sohinki. They’re usually nice to the girls, but not to themselves, and certainly not to Sohinki. Lasercorn himself said he would have sold Sohinki out for five bucks.

Mari says slowly, “I would have asked you if you had something on Lasercorn, but Lasercorn is clearly enjoying this, so.”

Sohinki glances at Wes, who’s steadily looking back. This is getting bad, and it’s getting away from them. Mari always seems poised to step in and _do something_. Joven has even smacked Lasercorn’s hand once when he tried to reach for Sohinki’s ass. Even if Wes isn’t sometimes so angry at Lasercorn he couldn’t speak, Sohinki needs to do something soon.

***

And Sohinki can deal with Lasercorn himself, thank you. He has texted Lasercorn, _Stop it_ , to which Lasercorn replied, _no_ , to which he replied, _No really stop it_ , to which Lasercorn replied with a heart emoji. Which was admittedly a bust, but it would have been no worse than Mari approaching Lasercorn about workplace sexual harassment.

His next move will have to be more direct, so when Lasercorn is sitting too close again, watching him play Hearthstone, he just concedes the game and says, “Do you wanna go grab a coffee?”

“What?” Lasercorn asks, presumably not expecting _Sohinki_ to ask him out.

“Do you want to go grab a coffee with me?”

But Lasercorn recovers quickly. “I want some lunch too. What was that place you like?”

Sohinki only briefly considers telling Lasercorn to take him to a fancy restaurant. Well, Lasercorn wouldn’t do it, so that would have been moot.

They end up going to Taco Bell and getting a booth in the back. He isn’t afraid of getting seen by Wes, who he already promised something to the effect of, _I’ll set some boundaries, he’ll get it_ , but by the rest of the guys at Smosh, who are still dirty, rotten gossips after all these years.

“Hey,” Sohinki says. “Do you know what I’m about to ask you?”

“To go out with you,” Lasercorn says, rolling his eyes. “It’s a little late, but I’ll take it.”

“No.” Sohinki glares. “To stop what you’re doing, because Wes is getting testy with me.”

Lasercorn grins. “That was the wrong way to ask me that.”

“What?”

What the fuck does that mean?

“You’re supposed to say that you want me to stop because it’s not welcome, and because you’re uncomfortable,” Lasercorn says. “Instead you just used Wes as an excuse.”

Goddammit. Lasercorn has never used his Sohinki powers for good, ever.

Now Sohinki can either rephrase, or he can go for the jugular.

“Wes is not an excuse,” Sohinki says. “He’s my boyfriend.”

Lasercorn laughs. “Wow. Okay, I knew that. Jesus Christ. This has been all very ‘I’m a married woman’ of you.”

What is Sohinki supposed to do? He would just like to stop feeling so fucking guilty over nothing, and he wishes he could brush this off like Mari brushes off Joven and Flitz, but Mari doesn’t have unresolved feelings for Joven and Flitz, and she isn’t so incredibly easy like Sohinki is.

“I just.” Sohinki takes a deep breath. “I just want everything to go back to normal.”

“I figured.” Lasercorn rolls his eyes. “But everything’s changed for me, so.”

Sohinki’s heart stops for two seconds. He can’t seem to look away from Lasercorn’s eyes, startlingly earnest, with something that’s not quite longing, and not quite pain.

He shouldn’t encourage this. He has no right to ask.

“How,” he says.

Lasercorn leans back in his seat. “Well, for one, I keep going back to all the times I could have asked you out while you were still single, and you still had those huge, dark eyes, but the hair was not working for you back then like it does now. So I wanted to find some reference photos to see if I remembered that hair correctly, then I realized that I didn’t have that many photos of you, so I had to go to the fucking Youtube channel for stuff to jerk off to.”

Wait.

“I was this close to just commissioning someone to photoshop you into porn, but then I settled for some guy with the same hair color and body type.”

“Stop,” Sohinki moans. He regrets ever being moved. “Stop. It’s just your porn habit that’s changed.”

“I also developed an obsession with your mole,” Lasercorn offers.

Sohinki looks away. “Wes also said something like that.”

“I don’t know,” Lasercorn says, frustrated. “I’m still in this fucking phase where everything you do is a little endearing. Like, I don’t know how long it’ll last, but I literally saw you scoot your chair this morning and thought that was cute. I mean, I couldn’t stop myself from being aware of you, and the things I’m doing that you’re telling me to stop, half of it isn’t even on purpose.”

Oh Jesus Christ. Are confessions of love supposed to be this painful for the one receiving them? The tables have turned, but instead of feeling triumphant or even happy, Sohinki just feels a keen sense of loss. Maybe if he hadn’t been such a coward and made a move at literally any time, something would have happened and those years would have been giddy, cherished first years of a new relationship, instead of being filled with bitter self-recriminations about committing the cardinal gay sin of falling for a straight guy. Who can say if they would have worked out or broken up, but at least they wouldn’t be stuck in this slow-motion car crash that is going to take Wes down with them too.

“I’m sorry,” Sohinki says, because he can’t admit that he felt the same way about Lasercorn, back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. He can’t say that he wishes he wasn’t dating Wes, because he doesn’t. But he is sorry that anyone would have to be hurt at all.

“Don’t be sorry for me,” Lasercorn scowls. “It feels great to be in love.”

Christ, he said that word again.

“Can you not,” Sohinki mutters.

“Tell me that you don’t feel anything,” Lasercorn says. “And I will.”

Lasercorn is banking on Sohinki being too categorically selfish and proud to say it. It’s not like Sohinki wants to lead Lasercorn on while still dating Wes, but he shouldn’t have to lie just to get Lasercorn to stop what he’s doing. He shouldn’t have to.

“I thought so,” Lasercorn says. “Why is this so hard? Why can’t you admit the thing that we both know? You and I would be so much better together than you and Wes.”

“Now that’s not true,” Sohinki snaps. “Wes listens to me better.”

“You like a challenge. You like cats. Wes is a puppy dog!”

Sohinki shakes his head. “I like puppies fine! And I like telling people what to do.”

“Wes is just.” Lasercorn starts and stops, scowling at himself and grabbing Sohinki’s hand. “Look, I can’t even compare ‘you and Wes’ to ‘you and me’ because it’s ridiculous. I know you so much better than he does. We always have a thing. We’re always on the same wavelength. And I’m not explaining it well because it’s just chemistry, you either have it or you don’t have it, and we—We have it. You can’t tell me you don’t feel it.”

Sohinki’s chest hurts.

“You don’t know what Wes and I are like,” Sohinki says, taking his hand back and tucking it under his legs. “Even I don’t know what Wes and I could be in the future, but we like each other and it’s fun to be together so we’re giving this the best shot we have.”

“Yeah,” Lasercorn says. “Does that include letting me jerk off in front of you in San Diego?”

What a dirty little bitch.

“You asked me to!”

“Is that part of your best shot or not?”

Sohinki almost, _almost_ said _It was a mistake_. That would have sounded disastrously like he admitted he was cheating.

“I was just helping you out, remember?”

“Then you wouldn’t mind it if Wes knew?”

Sohinki grabs the plastic fork and holds it like a knife in Lasercorn’s direction.

“This isn’t endearing you to me, you know.”

“Sorry,” Lasercorn holds his hands up in surrender. “Sometimes I forget I’m trying to get into your pants.”

“Hey,” Sohinki offers. “I’d rather you forget.”

“Nope,” Lasercorn says, and that was that.

***

Ordinarily it might have been quite nice to be at the center of a love triangle, but Sohinki can’t stand all the guilt that this one brings. Reddit is no help, the relationship subreddit especially. It is populated entirely by sanctimonious and puritanical busybodies who spout incredible bullshit like “emotional cheating.” Seriously, what the ever-loving fuck is “emotional cheating”? And how would still being friends with Lasercorn be “disrespectful” to Wes anyway? It’s like the advice column run by Catholic nuns. What a load of fucking bullshit.

“Why are you yelling at your computer?” Joven asks, ambling in. Sohinki is so startled he knocks his empty mug off of the table. Fuck, he forgot Joven hasn’t left yet.

“Go away Joven.” He clutches at his chest.

“You’re not recording a video,” Joven says, suspicious now. He squints at Sohinki’s screen. “And you’re not playing Hearthstone either. You’re yelling at Reddit?”

“Oh my God,” Sohinki says, switching his screen to the Youtube home page. “Go away.”

Joven grins, all appearances of a cat that got the cream. “What were you doing yelling at Reddit? C’mon, tell me. Tell me tell me tell me. You can trust papa with a secret.”

Sohinki tries not to squirm. “First of all, I’ve already told you to stop calling yourself papa. The next time you do it I’ll rip your throat out. Second of all, exactly how much yelling did you hear?”

“Oh, nothing much,” Joven says, faux casual. “Just something about how someone’s not cheating.”

Fuck his life.

“It’s about a game,” Sohinki says. “It’s about Dota! You wouldn’t be able to understand even if I explained it to you.”

Joven pulls up a chair and sits down next to him, settling in. “That’s convincing. You wouldn’t have jumped like that if it was about Dota though.”

“I didn’t jump! And I get startled a lot.”

“C’mon, tell me,” Joven wheedles. “I’m not going to tell anyone.”

Joven knows. That’s Joven’s gossip face.

“Is that a threat?” Sohinki asks. “Are you gonna tell everyone what you overheard?”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Joven scowls. “See, you can trust me.”

Sohinki melts a little. And probably, under any other circumstances he wouldn’t have done this. If it was anyone else, if he wasn’t so badly in need of opinions from people who aren’t random assholes on Reddit, if he wasn’t so unsure about where he stood, he wouldn’t have told Joven anything and sent him fucking off. But Joven has been in a stable relationship for a little over a year, and Joven is on Sohinki’s side, and goddammit, he wants some confirmation that he’s not a bad person.

Sohinki takes a deep breath.

“So hypothetically,”

“Okay,” Joven says, almost hyperventilating with excitement. Sohinki already regrets this.

“Hypothetically, if I was dating someone, and a guy comes onto me—”

“Oh my God.”

“And he told me that he just wanted my help, to see if he was attracted to guys.”

“Okay?”

“And he just wants to jerk off in front of me, while I’m in the room, without me having to do anything or even touch him—”

“Oh my God,” Joven says. “It’s Lasercorn isn’t it.”

Sohinki’s face heats. He perseveres.

“It’s not cheating right? I was just helping a guy out. Perfectly normal bro shit.”

Joven has both of his hands pressed over his mouth. Sohinki slaps him on the arm.

Slowly Joven’s hands come down. “You said it in the past tense, meaning you already did it.”

“I didn’t do anything! That’s the point.”

“You let Lasercorn do it then.”

Sohinki shakes his head. “Hypothetically, I didn’t know that Lasercorn was even interested. _Hypothetically_ , this was before all of the creepy stuff that he did.”

“Oh my God,” Joven repeats, for the third time.

“That’s not helpful.”

“Okay, sorry,” Joven says. “Let me have a minute.”

Sohinki lets Joven have a minute, during which time Joven takes his glasses off and wipes them unnecessarily. Something gets stuck in Sohinki’s throat, and he braces himself for the worst.

“Okay,” Joven says. “Okay. My question is, why did you let him do it? Did you really just want to help him out or was it a vanity thing?”

“Why is everybody fixated on that part?” Sohinki mutters.

“It’s important!”

Sohinki tips his chair back and consults the ceiling. “I didn’t really think,” he says. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“Or did you actually have feelings for him?”

“What?” Sohinki sits up, the bottom of his stomach dropping out. Joven does have good instincts. Fuck.

Joven shrugs. “You know what I thought when I saw Lasercorn go after you? I thought why not. You guys make sense together, and the more I thought about it the more I was convinced that if you were into guys you would probably be into him.”

“What do you mean ‘make sense?’” Sohinki says hotly. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“Hey,” Joven holds his hands up in surrender. “I didn’t know you already had a girlfriend.”

“Forget about that part. What do you mean ‘make sense?’”

“I don’t know!” Joven says. “You guys like to gang up on other people together, and when you’re on the same team you kinda always win. You get along well, you find the same things funny, and he tolerates your A-type thing without being dominated by it.”

Is that how they seem to other people?

When Sohinki is silent, Joven continues. “ _Mari_ doesn’t tolerate it, and Wes does but he also never stands up to you. And you guys have that reading each other’s thought thing. I mean, I didn’t see it until it’s been shoved in my face but once I saw it I couldn’t stop seeing it.”

“Well.” Sohinki exhales. “What you’re saying is you thought Lasercorn and I should be together.”

Joven considers him quizzically. “You don’t see it?”

Lasercorn had said, _Don’t tell me you don’t feel it_. As if it was supposed to be obvious. As if once presented as a possibility, ‘Lasercorn and Sohinki’ as a thing would be self-evident, a foregone conclusion patiently awaiting them to reach.

Sohinki decides to dodge the question again. “Just tell me if you think it’s cheating.”

Joven grimaces. “If you have feelings, probably yes?”

He expected that, but it still packs a punch. Knocks out his breath.

“Why does having a little bit of feeling matter?”

“Seriously? I mean, it is borderline, since you didn’t kiss Lasercorn or anything, right?”

“No,” he sighs.

Joven pats his arm sympathetically. “Look, even if you didn’t have feelings, it still wouldn’t have been totally above-board.”

“And you’re not just saying that because you want me to break up with my girlfriend and get together with Lasercorn?”

“No,” Joven says. “Okay, think about it this way. Would the girl you’re dating be upset if she knew?”

Sohinki buries his head in his hands. “Lasercorn said that too.”

He keeps having to be told things multiple times to believe it.

“You should tell her,” Joven says quietly.

“I didn’t ask you what I should do!”

“Sor—”

“You’re messing me up right now,” Sohinki groans, not caring about being mean. “Was it your goal to make me feel bad?”

“No,” Joven says, still very quiet. “Believe it or not I’m on your side.”

“Are you trying to rub it in?” Sohinki snaps. “I know you’re on my side, and you’re still telling me that I’m a massive dick.”

Joven shakes his head. Seals Sohinki’s fate. “It all depends on what she thinks.”

Sohinki is screwed. Fuck, he is so screwed. If he didn’t have feelings, it wouldn’t have been that bad, but he also wouldn’t have let Lasercorn jerk off in front of him in the first place. How the fuck is he in this much trouble for something so small? Improbably, Sohinki regrets not doing more in San Diego. The whole thing could have properly qualified as cheating and justified all of this angst and self-recrimination. Maybe led him to this place sooner, and not have wasted Wes’s time.

Sohinki is still hunched over with his hands covering his face. He looks up at Joven.

“Can I get a hug even if I don’t deserve it?” He asks meekly.

Joven hates hugging.

“Yeah,” Joven says, and gathers an armful of Sohinki into the slightly squishy warmth of his chest.

***

Sohinki spends the next few weeks trying to talk himself out of telling Wes, keeping two separate and steadily growing mental lists of various reasons why today is not the day to start being brave.

Somewhat Valid Reasons:

  * All it’s going to do is upset Wes,
  * For the sole purpose of clearing Sohinki’s own conscience.
  * If Sohinki really wanted to make Wes happy and be a better person or whatever, he should just probably stop spending so much time with Lasercorn.



Totally Invalid but Compelling Reasons:

  * Sohinki hates confrontations.
  * He also hates admitting he’s wrong.
  * Ditto for apologies.
  * Most importantly, he doesn’t know what to say.



But then Jackie sends him her wedding invitation, a bolt of clarity across the blue sky.

***

 _I know we haven’t been talking much since my mom passed away_ , Jackie writes. _But my wedding is coming up, and I know that she’d like you to be there_.

The email ends: _There’s just the reception, and please feel welcome to bring a plus-one_.

Sohinki knew, as soon as he read Jackie’s invitation, that he wanted Wes to go with him and that it would be horrifically unfair.

The wedding will be held in his hometown, which means he’s going back to stay with his family, which means that bringing Wes to the wedding will also double as a meet-the-family date, and Wes deserves to know everything before he has to go through something so potentially traumatic. The thing is, Sohinki badly wants someone else there with him for what will be an exquisitely awkward reception, since they were just neighbors and he doesn’t know any of Jackie’s friends. Even though it’s a December date, Sohinki doesn’t trust himself to not chicken out, invite Wes to the wedding anyway, and risk Wes finding out about San Diego afterward.

***

There was never any question of Sohinki not going to the wedding. He was due to visit her grave again soon.

***

Sohinki starts by writing down what he needs to say. Nothing too self-serving, nothing that absolves him, and nothing that makes it about him and Lasercorn, instead of him and Wes. A more honest version of what he already told Joven. Start by admitting he fucked up; end by throwing himself at Wes’s mercy. _Wes, whatever you want to do_.

It feels like lying even though he’s trying to tell the truth. He’s not someone who can apologize sincerely—partly because he’s just never had that Catholic habit of confession beaten into him in his youth. And every word he writes down sounds like it’s coming from somewhere else, spoken by a stranger, as if hearing his real voice for the first time and finding it strange and discordant to his ears.

He chooses to prepare Wes with, “Can we talk later?”

Sohinki wanted to do it at Wes’s place but Joven might be there, so they just end up waiting in the office until everyone has left. Joven seems to want a ride, and only extraordinary self-restraint and discipline stop Sohinki from beating Joven savagely with a stick to get him to leave. Wes, already primed for bad news, is glancing over at Sohinki and checking on Joven once every few minutes, wearing the worst poker face Sohinki’s ever seen.

It’s late when they get the office to themselves. Spencer the editor is still clacking away at something in his cubicle outside, but the office is empty and deathly silent.

Sohinki thinks he might have a stroke. He tries not to sound rehearsed, and Wes listens to him quietly. Wes is quiet when he’s furious, which Sohinki already knows.

A laugh at the end. Sohinki is scared.

Wes asks, “Do you know what the worst thing is?”

Sohinki swallows. He feels slow, like he’s pawing through a wool blanket.

“No.”

“It’s the part where you say, ‘whatever you want to do,’ instead of begging for my forgiveness and promising to do anything to stay together.”

“I didn’t want to pressure you.”

Wes looks away. “I almost think it would have been better if you tried to hide it from me as long as you could. That would have meant you were more invested in staying together.”

“Wes, I’ll do any—”

“Why did you decide to tell me?” Wes asks, uninterested in Sohinki’s promises now.

Sohinki didn’t prepare for this question. What does he even say? If he said it was Joven, then he would have admitted to telling Joven before he told Wes.

There is no way to steel himself against how small Wes’s voice sounds now.

“Was it because you decided you wanted to be with Lasercorn?”

“No,” Sohinki says quickly, understanding at last. “No. It was, God, it was Joven. I didn’t think it was a big deal, really, but Joven said all that matters is what you think.”

There’s a pause as Wes digests this. Joven being unexpectedly wise is still a revelation, which means that Joven probably stole that line from someone else.

“You said you had some unresolved feelings for Lasercorn from before.”

Sohinki tried to be honest. He did. He just couldn’t bring himself to say that he dated Wes in order to get over Lasercorn.

“Yes.”

Wes shakes his head. “Do you know how different that makes these last few months? You were insisting that you could stay friends with Lasercorn even though you both had feelings for each other. That makes me an idiot.”

“It didn’t matter,” Sohinki says. “I already made my choice.”

“Have you?”

“I have,” Sohinki insists. “I’m sorry for not telling you, but it didn’t matter.”

Wes sinks down into his chair. “It does matter. What you did would have been fine if you didn’t have feelings.”

“I’m sorry,” Sohinki says. He should just have said that instead of the other thing, probably.

“So you had feelings and you suspected he had feelings.”

No, not suspected. _Hoped_.

“Yeah,” Sohinki says. “I’m sorry. That was real stupid.”

“And then you rationalized it and didn’t tell me until now.”

The lesson Sohinki learns is, Wesley has claws.

“Sorry,” Sohinki says. He can’t stop himself from saying sorry. “I was being a massive dick.”

“Yeah, you being a dick and being self-serving just stopped being cute.”

They’re just sitting across from each other but Sohinki doesn’t dare to inch closer. Wes feels unpredictable right now.

“Well,” Wes says, “I’m not going to break up with you for you, if that’s what you were hoping.”

And what claws.

“That’s not. That’s not what I was hoping.”

Wes suddenly stands up and sends his chair reeling backward. He walks to the wall and punches it weakly.

“Then why did you have feelings for him white dating me? That’s the thing I can’t get over. And you’re always gonna have feelings for him if he keeps pulling this shit.”

It is becoming devastatingly clear that Sohinki should never have tried to date Wes to get over Lasercorn. Why did he think he could go into a relationship to change himself? God, these last few days have just been one revelation after another, and none of it good.

“I should never have done that,” Sohinki says. “You were right. Wes, I’m trying to find a good way to say that I don’t regret dating you but I regret everything else that I did. I shouldn’t have dated anyone else while I was still hung up on Lasercorn. And then I tried to play the Lasercorn thing down because I just didn’t want to deal with how guilty I was. I mean, that was very unfair.”

“But you can’t change the way you feel.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Sohinki,” Wes growls. “Do you love me?”

He wants to love Wes. He does. But not enough, and not in the way that matters.

An awful advice page he found on the Internet said that he should say _I love you_ a lot, repeatedly, if only to make Wes feel more secure. It turns out that Sohinki cannot even do that.

“I really like you,” he says instead. “I like making you happy. I don’t like it when you’re sad. I think the fact that small gestures can make you practically glow is very cute, and I adore the side of you that’s like a kid and can’t hold a grudge. And all this time we’ve had a lot of fun together and I’ve only liked you more.”

“I loved you,” Wes says quickly, like ripping off a band aid. “I constantly think about you and I constantly want to see your face. Just seeing you and knowing you’re mine can make my entire day. Do you know why I’ve never said that before? I was so scared you didn’t feel the same way. And now I guess I had good reason to worry.”

What can Sohinki say? _I can learn to love you_? _I don’t deserve you_? All true, but any platitude he reaches for would be insulting.

Wes does own guns. Sohinki could just ask Wes to put him out of his misery.

“I still won’t break up with you for you,” Wes says.

The ball is in Sohinki’s court. The ball is cursed. Sohinki hates the ball.

“You want me to break up with you?”

“No,” Wes says. “I don’t know what I want, but you have to take responsibility for everything that happens.”

Sohinki just assumed that Wes would be deciding what happens, and of course Wes is right, he was just trying to save himself from having to make any decision. For the first time Sohinki begins to think about what would be waiting for them on the other side of this mess. If they stay together, Wes would still love him more than he loves Wes back, which is a fundamentally unfair proposition that he has no right to ask another person to take. If they break up, Sohinki loses his chance with the one person he knows loves him. He will lose Wes’s laugh and Wes’s affection and the solid wall of Wes’s chest.

But he doesn’t feel ready for that love. He is turning 30 soon, and he doesn’t feel ready to have a relationship at all.


	5. Hypothesis #5: The tragedy of the commons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermaths, wherein everybody licks their wounds and they try to figure out who has custody of Joven, of all people.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got way too into Kollok 1991, started writing a fic for it, got writer’s block and couldn’t write anything else for months. Mostly finished with this story though. Writing the last few paragraphs rn.

Sohinki reaches for the lapel of Wes’s jacket, not daring to go for his hands.

“I wish we had a better shot at making this work,” Sohinki says. “Let’s break up.”

He wanted to say _Let’s take some time off_ , but they both know that this would be final. End of the line.

“Okay,” Wes says. “I hate you.”

How many times have they all said that to each other? This is the first time Sohinki thinks any of them means it.

“I deserve that,” Sohinki says, even though it’s not what he wants. He wants them to stay friends, and he wants to wind the clock back to where they were before, when he said yes, and he wonders if ten, twenty, thirty years from now, they will all look back on that moment before everything went to hell as the best time of their lives, all of them just having fun and playing games, so young they physically can’t think far ahead, that moment frozen in ember, on the Internet, whose phantom warmth they will feel for the rest of their lives.

Sohinki dithers at the door. He needs to leave and leave Wes alone.

“Look,” he says. “Joven doesn’t know a lot. I mean, I asked him for advice, but I haven’t told him about us.”

Wes looks up.

“I mean, if you want to tell him, or if you want to tell any of them about what a dick I am, then you should.”

“Thanks for your permission,” Wes says.

“Wes, I’m trying to say that I was wrong about that too,” Sohinki admits. “We should just have come out, and it’s only fair now that our friends know that it’s me who fucked things up.”

Wes tucks his hair behind his ear and considers Sohinki, as if seeing him for the first time with different eyes.

“You really made the worst decisions, didn’t you,” Wes says.

***

What Sohinki was implying, without having to verbally commit to it, is that if Wes wants he could have custody of Joven and their other friends. The perverse thing about this break-up is that no one knows they were dating in the first place, so one can comfort Wes, no one can commiserate with Wes about what a selfish fucking prick Sohinki is, and no one realizes anything has changed.

Wes doesn’t tell anyone of course. He’s just approximately 150 percent less happy than usual and taken to pretending that Sohinki doesn’t exist, which is not lost on anyone in the room. Thankfully, everyone automatically assumes the worst because Sohinki, normally vindictive and easily offended, doesn’t even react and just lays down and dies. Mari takes a 180 degree turn from being protective toward Sohinki to exclusively addressing him as a bitch. And Joven pulls Sohinki aside on the third day after their break up, hissing at him to just “fix it, whatever it is.”

Sohinki looks away from Joven, feeling wretched.

“It’s not something that can be fixed,” he says meaningfully.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

Sohinki lowers his voice to a whisper. “Remember that thing I asked you about a few weeks ago?”

“Oh my God,” Joven says. “Wes is your girlfriend. Your girlfriend is a pretty girl.”

“ _Was_ my girlfriend.”

Joven shoves Sohinki. “I can’t believe I felt sorry for you.”

“Do me a favor—”

“No.”

Sohinki hits Joven’s arm. “Do me a favor and look out for Wes.”

“Oh,” Joven says.

“I told him he should tell everyone, but he hasn’t, so they don’t know what he needs. But you do.”

Joven shakes his head. “Why are you trying to be a nice guy now?”

“It’s not like I stop caring about him when we break up,” Sohinki snaps. “I don’t want to see him unhappy.”

“And you don’t want to feel guilty.”

“Yeah, that’s why,” Sohinki says. “Just look out for him. He has no one right now. I mean, he has his brothers, but I doubt that he told them either.”

“I can’t believe you cheated on Wes with L-Corn,” Joven says. “Talk about _not_ trading up.”

“I didn’t _trade_.”

“I see it though,” Joven says, ignoring his objection. “Wes always seemed fonder of you than you were of him.”

“Stop,” Sohinki says. “Look, there’s something else I have to ask you.”

Joven is suspicious.

“I’m not saying yes,” he hedges.

Sohinki squirms. He actually cares about Joven’s answer.

“Are we okay,” he asks.

Are we okay after I kinda cheated on one of your best friends with another one of your best friends?

Joven rolls his eyes.

“We’ll see,” he says. “You’re literally still in the dog house.”

“Not literally,” Sohinki mutters after Joven has already walked away. “Metaphorically. It’s fine to use ‘literally’ to emphasize something but you can’t use it like that with a metaphor. It makes no sense you idiot.”

***

One person who also knows what happened but definitely can’t look out for Wes is Lasercorn, who hovers on the edges of Sohinki’s awareness like a ghost. Lasercorn knows, the very day after Sohinki and Wes break up Lasercorn knows, and Sohinki knows he knows because he instantly stops hitting on Sohinki, and in the ensuing cold war just completely refuses to take a side. If he had taken Sohinki’s side, Sohinki would have hated him, and somehow he knew not to do that. Instead Lasercorn just ignores everything that’s going on and allows Sohinki to pretend that their lives are back to normal, a comforting, predictably unpredictable presence in the midst of Smosh Games’ emotional carnage. Sohinki badly wants to just spend time with Lasercorn and avoid everyone else, like escaping to his personal oasis, but that would seem like he immediately started dating Lasercorn after breaking up with Wes.

Sohinki decides to ration his time with Lasercorn. He allows himself only thirty minutes every day with Lasercorn alone, just enough time to play a game or record a short video, but not so long that it seems like they’re growing closer, which they probably are. Lasercorn has taken to calling him “Hinks,” or “Sohinks,” nicknames that are like endearments, unbidden with proprietary affection. And whenever Sohinki’s self-imposed thirty minutes limit is up, he finds it increasingly difficult to leave, so much so that he has to invent more rules to comply with. For one, the thirty minutes counts even if some of the others are in the room but they’re doing their own thing. For two, his minutes are transferable from day to day but not from week to week, so that he doesn’t get an hour and a half the Monday after a weekend. Ridiculous rules for a ridiculous game, meant only for a weak-willed man, like that dog sipping his coffee in a burning room, insisting that everything was fine even as his face melts off.

That weekend Lasercorn shows up at his apartment anyway, without warning and bringing beer.

“Everyone is taking care of Wes,” Lasercorn says. “Who’s taking care of you?”

“I don’t need to be taken care of,” Sohinki says. “And I hate beer.”

“But what if you need to get drunk?”

“I hate drunks.”

“You hate being drunk too,” Lasercorn smiles. “Your motor-skills are shot and you can’t play video games.”

“Yeah,” Sohinki says, still standing at the door even though Lasercorn has let himself in and set up at Sohinki’s bed, which doubles as a sofa. “The one time I got drunk I played Hearthstone, and then I woke up and was like, Why did I drop eight ranks in one day? How’s that even possible?”

“Look, I just want to make sure that you’re okay,” Lasercorn says. “I’m not going to make a move on you.”

That’s _not_ what Sohinki is concerned about, but he can’t explain that the real reason is because he’s only allowed thirty minutes of L-Corn time every day. That would be certifiable.

“You also said in San Diego that you just wanted to know if you’re even attracted to guys.”

“I did,” Lasercorn says. “I lied, but I’m not lying now.”

“That’s not a great precedent.”

“Well, _you_ can tell when I’m lying, so.”

That almost got him. Sohinki has got to stop being so easy. The truth is that Sohinki is fucking terrible at figuring out when Lasercorn is lying, mostly because he always wants to believe Lasercorn and be on his side.

“I couldn’t tell that time,” Sohinki says, finally shutting the door and walking over to where Lasercorn has made himself at home.

Lasercorn tugs on the sleeve of Sohinki’s hoodie.

“That’s because you were lying to yourself.”

Sohinki does not want to relitigate this again. He has no idea whether or not he was lying to himself, just that he could scarcely believe it was happening and that he did not want it to stop.

He flops down next to Lasercorn.

“I really can’t be sober for this.”

“That’s the idea,” Lasercorn says, and hands him a beer. The beer tastes stupid.

***

It turns out that Lasercorn does not in fact make a move on Sohinki, but he does want to know exactly what happened with Wes. It feels dangerously like old times when they were just hanging out and trading stories about the girls they liked, with Sohinki shamelessly subbing out the pronouns, but Sohinki can’t do that to Wes. Instead Sohinki complains about how much he misses Wes, and he does, because he’s never been in a relationship before where it was just unconditional, where he didn’t have to prove himself worthy of being loved. He hates the constant sharp elbows sometimes, being in Smosh Games, even though he’s the one most guilty of it himself. It was nice to just be with someone who wants to play Sohinki’s games and who lets Sohinki show off, who occasionally, if he’s feeling very brave, can pipe up with some good idea of what they should do next once they’re done playing Dota.

Perversely Sohinki wants to drag Lasercorn down to his level. Make him as miserable as he is, as guilty, as complicit, as frustrated and lonely. But talking about Wes doesn’t really do anything to faze Lasercorn, who keeps making the right sympathetic noises and refusing to be as miserable and petty and vindictive. Yes, Lasercorn feels extremely sorry about Wes. Yes, he wishes he had made a move first. No, he wouldn’t change a thing about what happened in San Diego, because Sohinki liked people who could put up a fight.

“Forget being attracted to me,” Sohinki says. “Why are we even friends? I’ve been trying to make you feel bad all day while you’re trying to make me feel better.”

They’re playing a lazy map on GTA. The beer is almost gone, and so is the pizza they ordered, all of it making Sohinki a bloated, stuck pig.

Lasercorn shrugs. “Because only you keep scores? Strike that. I just. I know that you’re not at your best right now.”

“When am I ever at my best?”

Lasercorn answers immediately. “At one in the afternoon after you’ve had your two cups of coffee.”

“Great,” Sohinki says. He feels very far away from his coffee right now. It’s not that he’s a lightweight. He’s just always a little sleep deprived and liable to drift off to slow, unhurried dreams if not continuously consuming some form of stimulant at all times.

Lasercorn coughs. “You’re adorably grumpy when you’re buzzed. We should make you drink more often.”

“Hey,” Sohinki says, abruptly worried. “Hey, listen to me.”

“Yeah?” Lasercorn sets the controller down.

“Do you promise like, do you promise you’ve forgiven me for all those times I was being a dick?”

Sohinki doesn’t like how honest and plaintive that came out, but he also doesn’t want to be hated, not by anyone else.

He thinks Lasercorn is amused.

“Sure,” Lasercorn says, picking the controller back up. “And I promise to forgive you in the future for being a vindictive bitch even when you don’t deserve it, Sohinks.”

That’s good. Sohinki settles himself down to the bed and curls into his pillow, his controller loose in his hands, half-heartedly moving around the map and stabbing people, but mostly getting slaughtered. Eventually he realizes that Lasercorn’s lap is sitting right there and there’s no reason _not_ to nuzzle into it.

“Whoa,” Lasercorn says.

“How come only Joven and I do stuff that need to be forgiven?” Sohinki asks. “I don’t want to be like Joven. Little Sohinki never wanted to grow up to become someone like Joven.”

“I’m pretty sure Joven isn’t as bossy,” Lasercorn says. “Well, if he tried ordering us around like you do we would never have tolerated it anyway.”

Sohinki looks up, feeling suddenly charitable and warm. “Was it because I’m special?”

“Let’s go with that,” Lasercorn says. “Wow, your eyes are really huge.”

“Are my eyes pretty?”

Lasercorn laughs. “You’re just really fishing for compliments today.”

“I’m not fishing, I’m demanding.”

“Yes,” Lasercorn says, thumbing Sohinki’s cheekbone, his hand gentle and sure. “Your eyes are very pretty and you are very drunk.”

“Bah,” Sohinki thumps his controller on the bed. “It’s impossible for me to get drunk on beer.”

He drifts off some time after that, surrounded by soft things and soft smells, everything dulled and fuzzy with indiscriminate, careless affection. There’s a soft pat on his cheek and at some point Lasercorn turns down the lights, and Sohinki remembers mumbling something about a sleeping bag in the closet since it’s getting too late to drive home, and Lasercorn muttering that he’s stayed over before, he knows where it is goddammit. But beyond that, Sohinki just surrenders to the easiest sleep he’s had in weeks, dreamless and without terrible, sinking guilt, almost certain that good things will happen to him again if he tries very, very hard to be a better man.

***

A month before the wedding, Sohinki takes Joven out to lunch and asks him to come with him to Virginia. He manages to make it sound only a little gay.

“I’ll pay for your plane tickets,” Sohinki wheedles. “You can stay in my brother’s room. Think of it as a free two-day vacation.”

“You want to bring me home to meet your family,” Joven says. He looks at his burger like it has betrayed him.

Joven has never been able to recognize when things are too good to be true, such as Sohinki actually being nice for once.

“I’m bringing you to a wedding because I don’t know any other people there,” Sohinki says. “We never went to school together. We just lived on the same block and our parents liked to trade off on babysitting.”

“And she liked you well enough to invite you to her small wedding? Does she know you’re gay?”

Sohinki feels a migraine coming on. “First off, you’re not allowed to say things like that around my parents.”

“Who I might not even see.” Joven rolls his eyes and starts eating his burger again, newly secure in his ability to dodge the wedding.

“Second,” Sohinki raises his voice. “Jackie and I kind of lost touch, but we used to be really close since we’re the same age and her mom treated me like another one of her kids. So it’s almost like a family wedding.”

“Huh,” Joven says. “I never knew that.”

“It never came up.”

Joven squints his eyes. “Just like how the gay thing never came up?”

“You guys’ve already seen me at my worst.” Sohinki throws up his hands. “We already spend like ten hours of every day together. Me being gay just wasn’t that important a thing to know.”

“I mean, I want to know about this though,” Joven says. “Especially since I might have to attend this woman’s wedding, it might be useful for me to know why you two had a falling out.”

Sohinki is in the throes of his death now, he’s sure of it. “One, it wasn’t a falling out. And two, I’m only telling this because you swear on the life of your dog that you’re going to the wedding.”

“Go on,” Joven says, his curiosity getting the better of him.

“It’s nothing,” Sohinki says, steeling himself. “Her mom died, but we were so young we just never wanted to talk about it. She reminds me of her mom and _I_ remind _her_ of her mom. I think we’ve been avoiding each other since.”

That’s a little more honest than Sohinki meant to be.

“That’s really sad,” Joven says. “A little cowardly, but mostly sad.”

“Just come with me. You’re my best friend out of everyone here. And I don’t want to go on an airplane alone.”

“You’re just saying that because you can’t take Wes or Lasercorn,” Joven mutters, but he’s clearly pleased.

It’s surely shameless to monopolize Joven like this, whose custody by clear unspoken agreement was shared between Wes and himself, but Joven’s right, he can’t turn to anyone else. Maybe Mari would go for it, but she’d take it the wrong way. It would have been so good if he’d been able to take home a tall, handsome boy and rub it in everyone’s face who voted him Most Likely to Die Alone, Chained to His Computer Desk, Robotically Pressing Q, but he went ahead and ruined it. At least Joven is so objectionable and clearly thirsty for any female attention that no one can possibly think they’re dating. No respectable Catholic mom would want the creepy pervert from every 1980s stranger danger video for her nice Jewish boy. Sohinki feels only slightly bad that that was his real reason for asking Joven specifically, instead of one of his more respectable friends.

***

The downside to all of this is that Joven thinks they’re best friends now, an idea Sohinki certainly encouraged at the time, might have even straight up said it, but definitely hasn’t so much as hinted at since. Joven begins taking what Sohinki can only call “best friend liberties,” however, and insists on offering unsolicited opinions about what Sohinki should do re: the Lasercorn situation, all of it boiling down to, _Why not_. It is not until one of Joven’s talking points starts to sound disturbingly familiar did Sohinki realize that Joven and Lasercorn have been _talking_ , and _sharing notes_. Alarmingly, their notes seem to converge on _Why break up with Wes if you weren’t gonna date L-Corn anyway_.

Sohinki has not really considered the possibility of Joven and Lasercorn gossiping before. The mental image of Lasercorn confiding in Joven of all people is just a little difficult to contemplate, much more so than Lasercorn muttering to himself at a blank wall, though it makes a certain kind of sense because Lasercorn also has no one to talk to, at least not about this. At the time Sohinki barely refrained himself from interrogating Joven about what Lasercorn said—about what _either_ of them said on the subject of Sohinki: whether or not they thought he was a fucking moron, and the initial confusion of why two otherwise psychologically sound and healthy guys would fall for someone with at best an average body, the face of Steve Buscemi, and the temperament of a troll.

“Seriously though,” Joven had asked, “why would you break up with Wes if you don’t want to date Lasercorn? Now it just feels pointless.”

“Really,” Sohinki said, glaring. “Two months after breaking up with Wes? Has he moved on by the way?”

“I am bound by blood to not discuss him with you,” Joven confessed.

“Well, I generally consider it in extreme poor taste to rub it in an ex’s face that you’ve moved on when it’s your fault that you broke up.”

Joven’s face looked calculating. Sohinki just knew that every word he said might possibly get reported back.

“So what, you aren’t gonna date anyone else ever?”

“You’re supposed to be Wes’s friend,” Sohinki said. “Why are you even pushing for this?”

“Once again, I am bound by blood—”

“Is this actually what Wes wants? Does he want to be proven right about me and Lasercorn?”

Joven had never been able to lie to Sohinki. Joven had no awareness of his own tells, and only just got by in traitor games by playing over the top and ambiguously racist characters. Joven squeaked.

“Great,” Sohinki said. “Now I don’t want to prove Wes right.”

“Wes probably needs you to move on before he can really give up on you,” Joven said quietly, and then he slapped his own face. “Fuck, I forgot. I’m not supposed to—”

Which was the exact moment that Sohinki tuned Joven out. Joven really was the worst, because all he did was put the ball in Sohinki’s court again, and if recent events have proven anything it’s that Sohinki cannot be trusted with the ball. If there’s a self-serving option that delays pain and ignores responsibility, he will take it and run.

***

It turns out that Sohinki was wrong about Joven being a terrible liar, because instead of Joven’s shitty car clanking its way around Sohinki’s apartment building to pick him up to the airport, it’s Lasercorn honking obnoxiously, unrepentant and just a little bit gleeful, who he walks up to on the Saturday morning before the wedding.

“Excuse me,” Sohinki says.

“Are you going to call Joven to yell at him?” Lasercorn asks. “You can do that in the car.”

“No. If Joven hauls his ass down here he might be able to make it in time, and he might escape with his life yet.”

“Not from me,” Lasercorn says. “Now get in here.”

Sohinki doesn’t even attempt to talk to Lasercorn first. He’s not had any caffeine, and they hit traffic almost immediately, so he has low simmering road rage now, but he will try to be mean only to the person who deserves it the most. Sohinki calls Joven, and before Joven can finish saying hi, he asks Joven if his brain was made of clay, because he’s clearly been influenced by whoever talked to him last, or if Joven was such an overbearing asshole that he tried to play the parent trap thing on his friends. Either that, or Joven must derive sexual pleasure from blindsiding people and losing their trust for no reason, not just because he played a two-faced, friendless asshole on TV, but because he’s also like that in real life and Sohinki’s just been too dumb to realize it.

Next to him, Lasercorn laughs nervously.

“Harsh words there Hinki. Now I might have to make it up to Joven.”

“He probably didn’t deserve all of that,” Sohinki admits. “But I’m grumpy, and it felt good.”

“Sorry. I basically had to terrorize Joven for a week.”

Sohinki laughs in spite of himself.

“I don’t believe it. You’re not really going with me, right? You’d have had to buy your own plane ticket.”

“I mean. I did.”

“ _Why_?” Sohinki hits his head against the car window. “I’m just going to a dumb wedding of my dumb friend with my other dumb friend.”

A car honks behind them, not out of any real intent, just to register a token protest against the traffic jam. Sohinki sits on his hands.

Lasercorn does a couple of double takes between Sohinki and the road before answering. “’Cause I always want to know more about you? You don’t get how stupidly possessive I’ve become of information about you. I was about to kill Joven when he mentioned this wedding, because I had no idea.”

“You’re doing it again,” Sohinki says. His stomach twists. “You’re saying things like that like it’s nothing.”

“Yeah.” Lasercorn says, smug. “I knew you’re really easy when people say they like you.”

“Who isn’t!”

“But look at how you’ve made me jealous of Joven. Joven!”

Sohinki thinks they’re flirting. He doesn’t want to be flirting. He can’t stop himself.

“Don’t be jealous of Joven. That might be the worst thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Lasercorn takes both of his hands off the wheels, which Sohinki hates.

“You two have a love-hate thing, but when you’re in the same room together it’s like Joven is physically incapable of not focusing on you.”

“Yes,” Sohinki says slowly. “Because I always pick on him. He’s cognizant of the danger I pose.”

“True. We pick on you and Joven a lot too, so you probably have some solidarity there.”

“I’d like you to stop that though?”

Lasercorn reaches over and pokes Sohinki in the arm. “It’s like a pigtail thing. Your reactions are funny ‘cause you’re so dramatic and disproportionately vindictive every single time.”

“It’s funny _sometimes_ ,” Sohinki says. “But most of the time I just wanted you to be nice to me, and you never were.”

“What?” Lasercorn pokes him again. “I’m nice to you. You’re just talking about when we play video games now.”

“Yeah, which happens to be 90 percent of what we do. Just be nice to me when we’re playing video games.”

Sohinki doesn’t say: Be nice to me, like Wes.

Lasercorn appears to be thinking about it as they move up one length of a car.

“No,” Lasercorn decides.

Sohinki already knew Lasercorn wouldn’t. The few times that Lasercorn was nice to him, he’s had his heart in his throat the entire time, constantly trying to keep Lasercorn happy, wondering if Lasercorn for some godforsaken reason is gonna turn on him, even when Lasercorn knew it’d make him really upset.

“Goddammit,” he says. “Can you just not do it if you know I’d be really upset?”

Lasercorn giggles. “Are you asking me to go easy on you?”

That would be nice.

“ _No_ ,” he says. “Forget it.”

This is why he and Lasercorn wouldn’t work out. They’ve learned all of each other’s buttons but they’ve never learned to stop before they trample past all their boundaries, assured that they would always find their way back on the other side, because friendship is forgiving but love is not. It is unfathomably annoying to be in love with Lasercorn as friends; it would be unbearable if they were in a relationship, because Sohinki wants none of the emotional highs and lows, he just wants it to be easy, and fun, kinda like how he had it with Wes before he fucked everything up.

***

There’s a certain sense of unreality as they float through the rest of traffic and check in, and Sohinki can’t shake the domesticity of going to the airport together. They used to a lot, with everyone else, but now that it’s just them it feels so much more intimate. Every time he turns around there’s Lasercorn, calling his name, grabbing his elbow, watching him play Hearthstone on his phone. They’re standing close together enough that he realizes some people make the assumption and some don’t, though Sohinki can’t help but feel warmed that Lasercorn, who sometimes just wanders off on his own, is sticking so close to him this time, like it’s them against the world.

Sohinki manages to get away for five minutes, calling his mom to tell her they’re coming down, but after the call ends he just stands there, boarding pass clutched in one hand and his phone in the other, silently plotting out how the next two days are going to go. He needs to pretend as if Lasercorn is Joven, delegate parents handling duty to said replacement Joven, find some time alone to visit Jackie’s mom, go to the wedding in his suit jacket and jeans, because Jackie said it’s gonna be casual, and make it back home without any more emotional revelation, in that order. Lasercorn seems intent on thwarting Sohinki’s last mission despite being integral to it, because Sohinki has to admit that whenever they’re on a trip Lasercorn has always been a kind of emotional rock, a lighthouse in troubled seas, sometimes flaky and liable to wander off, but steady and unflappable in the midst of their collective craziness. Sohinki will return to Lasercorn’s side when he needs to recenter himself, will hold Lasercorn’s hand on the airplane when Lasercorn offers, not because he wants to encourage what’s happening or lead Lasercorn on, but because he’s too selfish to _not_ take advantage, and these are probably things they would do together anyway, as very good and platonic friends, one of whom sometimes likes to unsubtly linger near the other’s neck and breathe in, and say, without any hint of platonic friendship, “You smell good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd seriously love some comments guys. Maybe I didn't mention that enough.


	6. Hypothesis #6: Never go back to your roots

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A breakthrough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I went back to watch the videos and they don’t say “Yo” nearly enough in this fic.

The flight was not entirely smooth, and Sohinki finds himself a little clingy afterwards, a shameful period which ends abruptly the moment he spots his mom. She recognizes him on first glance and Lasercorn from their videos, as Sohinki has yet to be able to convince Ian to region block Virginia, which is apparently only something cam boys would do, motherfucker.

“I thought Joshua was coming,” his mom says, after giving them both an itchy, feathery hug. It is very cold, and Sohinkis are a cold breed.

Sohinki already knew that his mom would have liked to see Joven again, who made a very good first impression on his mom the last time he met her, to Sohinki’s eternal horror and dismay.

“He couldn’t make it,” Sohinki says.

Lasercorn is pulling out their jackets and scarves from his backpack, but stops to explain. “I wanted to see the origin story of our resident supervillain.”

His mom laughs. “I thought that was you, David, from your videos.”

“Oh my god,” Lasercorn whispers loudly to him. “She really does watch them.”

“I told you. You can’t ever be mean to me on camera again, or my mom’s going to see it.”

His mom begins ushering them to the car. “Oh please. You and your brother were much worse. Except for all of those awful jokes about everybody’s moms.”

“Oh my god,” Lasercorn repeats. “I am so sorry. I didn’t mean it. I. Sohinki, help.”

“They all meant it! I was extremely hurt on your behalf.”

Lasercorn claws at his arms.

“I missed you, kid,” his mom says, and hugs him again.

***

As if by silent agreement, once they arrive at the Sohinki home they begin to present a united front, falling into the patter they developed for conventions, answering questions for each other, covering up necessary crimes, and never once contradicting each other’s lies. It helps that Lasercorn has scaled down the constant hitting on Sohinki, from Joven-Lite Creepiness to just Uncomfortably Close Friends. There was only a moment when his mom asks, carefully, if Lasercorn called him Sohinki like that at work, and not Matthew, because that time when Lasercorn bellowed for Sohinki to help him find the bathroom all three Sohinkis in the house had run over. Lasercorn answers, equally carefully, that he will remember to call Sohinki by Sohinks, Hinky, Sohinkadink, or Sostinky, in order to avoid confusion. He does not request to be addressed as Lasercorn instead of David, presumably because that remains a ridiculous combination of words.

They’re so comfortable that Lasercorn follows Sohinki to his room and sets his own stuff down without Sohinki really paying attention to it. The room is cluttered, of course, with all of Sohinki’s old stuff and also his parents’ things that have migrated there during all the time he’s away. Everything’s dusty and vaguely sad, except for the change of sheets on his bed, a half-hearted attempt at welcoming him home.

“Now where’s the photos,” Lasercorn says, looking around.

“Nowhere!” Sohinki yelps.

“C’mon, where’s your yearbook?”

“My brother’s room is this way,” Sohinki gets up and shoves Lasercorn out the door. “I’m gonna borrow my mom’s car for a bit, and you are going to stay in that room unless you wanted to do some tourist stuff on your own.”

“What? You’re not going to show me around?”

“I got a thing I have to do,” Sohinki says, hating how secretive that comes out. “Think of it as a one-man mission.”

“Right,” Lasercorn says slowly. “I’m definitely not gonna go through your unlocked room.”

“I will hurt you,” Sohinki says, his promise as empty as Lasercorn’s threat.

***

It is colder still, at her grave.

Sometimes when he went home for Christmas there’s still snow, and he’d have to pick his way through. Now the grass is just all dead and depressing—the last time he saw the grass green must have been before he went off to college, the brilliant summer mellowing out all of their goodbyes.

He sets down the lilies at the foot of the stone. Jews don’t like flowers for mourning, but she did.

“I miss you,” he tells her. “I don’t miss your terrible advice but I miss you.”

He misses love that was uncomplicated and dear. He was her number two, and the ridiculous, insistent honesty of it made him really believe she was telling the truth.

“I don’t get it,” he says, sitting down into the grass. “It’s not like I don’t have my own mom.”

“Your mom _is_ great,” Lasercorn says from behind him. Sohinki groans.

“Did she tell you?”

Lasercorn squats down next to him. “In full disclosure, she asked me if we were dating before she would tell me.”

“And?”

“I told her the truth.”

Sohinki pokes Lasercorn on the side. “Which truth?”

“That we weren’t dating, but I wanted to be.”

There goes his plan.

“Wow, cliché much?”

Lasercorn companionably bumps Sohinki with his shoulder. “I outed myself in order to not out you. I would have thought you’d thank me.”

“Thank you for interrupting a private moment.”

“I gave you like fifteen minutes before coming over! You spent half an hour or something just getting the flowers.”

Sohinki likes the florist in town much better than the cemetery’s own depressing flower shop.

“Did that satisfy your curiosity?”

“Not really,” Lasercorn says. “Your mom told me some basic stuff but she said you’d have to tell me the rest yourself.”

Sohinki hasn’t looked away from her gravestone.

“Sara died my senior year of high school,” he says finally. “Some infection from some rare bacteria they couldn’t diagnose in time, and she had these horrible cold fevers where she’d be shivering but sweating through her shirt. She would only have me and Jackie with her, you know. She didn’t want most of anyone else there, even her mother in law.”

“Her family let you do that?”

Sohinki shakes his head. “Her mother in law was wrestling with the insurance people. I just sat there playing games, helping her go to the bathroom and asking the nurse dumb questions.”

“Was she the one who said you were her number two?” Lasercorn asks carefully.

Sohinki huffs.

“Yeah.”

“I asked you if you still kept in touch with her and you said you tried to visit her every time you come home.”

A lie by omission.

“I just didn’t want to bring the mood down.”

Lasercorn wraps both arms around Sohinki’s shoulder. “She sounds cool. I’m sorry.”

For Sohinki’s loss.

“Thanks,” Sohinki says, and turns his face into Lasercorn’s shoulder. It feels as nice as he’d feared. “You know what she used to tell me? She used to tell me that I needed to learn the difference between being aggressive and being brave, and to stop calling people a pussy.”

Lasercorn laughs. “Sounds like you didn’t take her advice.”

“It was garbage advice,” Sohinki fumes. “I already knew I was a pussy. ’S not like I could suddenly decide to be brave.”

“Yeah,” Lasercorn says, rubbing his back.

“She knew she was going to die when it spread to her blood and her other organs. She held me in her arms and she told me to be brave,” Sohinki says. He can’t stop talking.

“She must have loved you so much.”

“I wasn’t brave. Her family resented me for taking so much of her time at the end. The funeral was horrible, because I was the one saying condolences and not the one who could grieve. I couldn’t be brave and I ran away from her family. It’s the last thing she would have wanted.”

Lasercorn’s arms around him tighten. “Sohinks.”

“I have my own mom,” Sohinki says. “So why do I miss her so much?”

“Sohinki,” Lasercorn says, and then topples him over. He lands softly on his back.

He blinks up at Lasercorn and the bright clear blue sky.

“What?”

Lasercorn kisses him, as tender and careful as he’s ever been kissed. He doesn’t feel brave. He feels fragile, as brittle as the grass crunched underneath him and liable to break if Lasercorn holds him too tight. But Lasercorn’s hand on his jaw and leg between his thighs are just enough to keep the pieces of him together, the only hint of hunger in Lasercorn’s nip to his lips and the way Lasercorn’s thumb digs a little into the line of his cheekbone, as if trying to hold himself back.

Sohinki clutches at Lasercorn’s chest, warm and solid and very grabbable, and kisses him back. It’s probably a bad idea, but Sohinki can’t think, overwhelmed by the comfort and affection meant by this single kiss, evident in the way he’s being treated like something precious, something that might slip between men’s fingers, and fall away.

***

“I might have taken advantage there,” Lasercorn says, when he pulls back. “But I’m not sorry.”

“Let me up,” Sohinki says. He realizes his eyes are wet and wants to wipe them where Lasercorn can’t see. First he focuses on getting back his breath. “Why did you do it?”

Lasercorn stands up and gives him a hand. “You looked vulnerable, and I just snapped.”

Sohinki doesn’t know how Lasercorn keeps managing to say the worst and best things.

“Great excuse for defiling my friend’s gravesite.”

“That’s not defiling,” Lasercorn says, affronted. “That was sweet. Well, I tried to be sweet.”

Sohinki can’t help himself.

“That _was_ a nice kiss.”

“Yeah?”

“It doesn’t mean—”

“I know.”

Lasercorn doesn’t know. Lasercorn still thinks that given enough time, sufficiently patient assault on Sohinki’s virtue, and by sheer gravitational force, they will somehow end up together. Lasercorn doesn’t realize that Sohinki is a pussyfooting, sorry excuse for a man who enjoys being wanted by Lasercorn but doesn’t really want to date him.

“You don’t know,” Sohinki says, his face in his hands.

Lasercorn pulls him close, by the hips.

“What don’t I know?”

Sohinki grabs onto Lasercorn’s jacket, partly just to put some distance between them.

“Do you remember a couple of years ago when you said you wouldn’t hold my hand unless I was a girl, even though our plane was in turbulence and I was really scared?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“That’s what I heard,” Sohinki grumbles.

Lasercorn laughs, still trying to draw Sohinki closer. “Why do you keep bringing that up?”

“That was probably the angriest I’ve been at you,” Sohinki says. “And it wasn’t fair since you didn’t even know why.”

“Yeah. Is this about how unreasonable you are? Because I already knew that.”

“Shut up,” Sohinki says. God, his heart. “I’m trying to tell you that I already liked you from back then.”

“Really,” Lasercorn says wonderingly, his hand moving up Sohinki’s back, along the line of his spine. “What do you mean by ‘like’? ‘Like’ is doing a lotta work there.”

Sohinki shivers, trying to look anywhere but Lasercorn’s face. “Well, I liked you so much that this is fucking terrifying for me right now.”

“Don’t be scared.”

“Can’t help it,” Sohinki says, more honest than he intended. “I’m scared and I’m not ready. It’s been like two months since Wes.”

Lasercorn shrugs. “Maybe you’re not ready right now,” he says, but he’s moving in like he’s going to kiss Sohinki again.

Sohinki allows it, allows Lasercorn to gather him up and press a kiss into the corner of his mouth, but not for very long, and not for as long as he wanted. When Sohinki pulls back his eyes are wet again, and he doesn’t know if it’s from him being here, in front of the grave, or if it’s from him being cruelly, willingly taken advantage of.

“You alright?”

Sohinki shakes his head. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

“Hm?” Lasercorn hums, softly and as if he’s still dazed. His hand is under Sohinki’s shirt, rubbing small circles into Sohinki’s back. “What do you mean.”

“I’d be making the same mistake,” Sohinki says into Lasercorn’s chest. “It’d be the worst start to a relationship. There’s the Wes thing, and there’s the fact that I’m resentful that I’ve been in love with you for like six years while you do dumb oblivious shit until the moment I was finally about to get over you, and then you just decide to come along and ruin it for me. What was all of that for before? Why couldn’t you just stay straight and oblivious? All of that time I wasted hanging around you just trying to get you to be nice to me, and you’ve never done it even once—”

“That’s just how I treat everybody in when I play video games!”

“I know!” Sohinki says. “You treat me like everybody else. That’s the point.”

“You want me to treat you like a princess?”

Sohinki laughs, somehow sending himself further into Lasercorn’s arms.

“Yeah, kind of.”

“But then I won’t be able to drive you crazy.”

Sohinki makes a move to wiggle out. “Well, if that’s how you feel—”

Lasercorn lets him move away just far enough to kiss him again. Hand under his chin. Chaste and excruciatingly tender. Like a princess.

Sohinki wants.

“You’re scared of me changing my mind,” Lasercorn muses. A statement of fact.

“You’ve never been gay before San Diego. And you’ve never noticed me. With the way I was back then I don’t think you even liked me that much.”

“Sohinki,” Lasercorn moans, shaking him a little. “You moved to L.A. to be a screenwriter. You started a YouTube channel playing video games when it wasn’t even a thing. Why is it suddenly difficult now to be brave?”

“Because all of the decisions I’ve made recently blew up in my face?”

“Okay,” Lasercorn says. “Then I’ll make the decisions. You’ll just have to follow them.”

Sohinki huffs. “Really.”

“That way I’ll take all the responsibility if it doesn’t work out.”

“Wow. Definitely how life works.”

“First of all,” Lasercorn says, ignoring him. “We tell everyone.”

“Wait—”

“Especially Wes.”

“Wait,” Sohinki says, thumping a fist on Lasercorn’s chest. “Yo, slow down. Wait.”

“Do you still have feelings for Wes or something?”

“What? I mean,” Sohinki stalls, and then realizes that he answers the question just by stalling. “Yes? Just because we’re broken up doesn’t mean I stop caring about him.”

“Wow. Is that why it’s so hard for Wes to get over you?”

Sohinki looks away. Fucking Christ.

“Wes hates me right now.”

“He still wants to fuck you.”

“Stop it.”

“Fine,” Lasercorn growls. “But we don’t hide it. If anyone asks we tell them the truth.”

Sohinki considers this.

“That we’re dating.”

“Yes,” Lasercorn says simply.

Sohinki takes a deep breath.

“Okay,” he says, knowing he’s just said _okay_ to more than one thing.

Sohinki looks up just in time to see Lasercorn grin. Same excited grin Lasercorn has when getting a present or opening up a Taco Bell wrap, impatient and giddy with anticipation, unaware of how absolutely, terminally miserable dating Sohinki could be.

“Second,” Lasercorn says. Sohinki didn’t expect that.

“Uh,”

“No cheating. Of any kind. And just so you know I’d consider San Diego cheating.”

The sheer hypocrisy and unreality of it seizes Sohinki, and brings him suddenly into hysterics.

“Oh my god,” Sohinki says between great wheezes. “Fuck you.”

“I mean it though,” Lasercorn says, his voice petulant and small. “I’m not as nice as Wes. I’ll be really vengeful.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt that. It’s just.” Sohinki nudges Lasercorn’s shoulder. “What a perfectly Lasercorny thing to say.”

“You love it,” Lasercorn mutters. It’s a question disguised as a statement.

Sohinki doesn’t say anything. And then, an answer disguised as a kiss.

***

Six PM on Sunday finds Lasercorn in a suit and leaning against Sohinki’s mom’s car in the driveway, arms crossed, waiting for Sohinki without a word. It’s not the white suit with the blood too, but a proper one, dark gray and ironed and fitted, and suddenly Sohinki feels underdressed.

“Lose the tie,” Sohinki says. “It’s not that kind of reception. It’s in the high school gym.”

Lasercorn lifts his head, as if considering Sohinki and smelling fear.

“Why don’t you take it off for me?”

“Right,” Sohinki says. He doesn’t know why, but he comes over, puts his hands on Lasercorn and takes the tie off. The fabric he rests his hands on feels nice to the touch, and Lasercorn’s chest rumbles under his hands.

Weirdest first date ever, achieved.

“Let’s get this over with.” Lasercorn coughs. “Judging by your trepidation I’m thinking that it might be horrific.”

Sohinki _doesn’t_ think it’s going to be horrific. He has hopes it’s going to be chill and not stuffy like all the other weddings he’s been forced to attend as a kid. He might not even have to talk to Jackie’s grandma, who he’s hated ever since the funeral and who for all he knows might be dead too. Even more optimistically, Sohinki might even be able to handle a conversation with Jackie, fresh start, without relitigating everything that’s happened since the last time they talked some ten years ago, with both of them in awful too big black clothes, their eyes rimmed red, willing to do anything to leave this town that used to be so good to them until their mom died, and then it was not.

***

The school gym smells better for the occasion, and has been, to Jackie’s credit, half-heartedly done up with teal and white streamers and balloons. The vibe, indeed, is extremely chill. Both Sohinki and Lasercorn sigh with relief when they see it, and see that everyone’s amicably milling around the two table rows of food in the middle, some Drake in the background, the bride and the groom making slow, separate rounds through the crowd.

Sohinki thinks that Jackie sees him as he comes in, and gives her a small wave.

“Okay,” he tells Lasercorn. “The plan is hanging around until I can say hi to Jackie, give her the thing, and wait for precisely twenty minutes before we get out of here.”

Lasercorn pokes his face. “That’s it? All of this,” he makes an all-encompassing gesture, meaning the flight, the angst, the bad timing. “All of this just for that?”

“We’re not staying until the dancing,” Sohinki says, slapping Lasercorn’s hand away.

“At least until the toast. Also you love dancing.”

Sohinki catches Jackie’s eye. She is definitely moving toward them.

“I don’t know,” he says, distracted. And then he gets the full view of the girl he grew up with, who was sometimes so gracious as to share with him her mom.

Jackie nearly runs up to them. She’s in a pearl white, minimalist dress, her hair swept up in a bun. She looks nothing like her hippie dancing mother. Sohinki finds that he’s missed Jackie too.

“Hi,” Sohinki says, and without letting himself think about it, goes in for a hug.

Jackie looks pleased when she pulls away.

“This is David,” Sohinki nods toward Lasercorn. He steels himself.

So far they haven’t told Sohinki’s parents yet. His mom and dad haven’t asked, and it hasn’t come up as to why Lasercorn just quietly moved his bags into Sohinki’s room for the night. In the morning they were woken up while cuddled together, chaste and incriminating and unbelievably dear, and Sohinki was too warm and sleepy at that moment to think about what his mom would have divined from seeing her darling Jewish boy in bed with someone he swore up and down was just a friend from work.

So if they say anything now, Jackie would be the first to know. But he’s taken too long already.

Jackie makes the assumption anyway.

“Hi David, how did you meet Matt?” Jackie asks.

Maybe it’s that easy.

“We met through work,” Lasercorn raptor-claws. “This is my favorite kind of wedding, by the way.”

“Yes,” Sohinki agrees. “None of that Christian stuff.”

“Bryce and I insisted on it,” Jackie laughs.

“What’s he like?” Sohinki asks noncommittally. He’s seen some of Bryce’s photos on Facebook, and from the look of it Bryce is permanently disheveled, glued to his track suit, and hasn’t groomed his beard in ten years.

“He’s from Minnesota,” Jackie smiles. “And when he introduced himself he said that there is only one Confederate flag in all of the state of Minnesota, and it’s a trophy they captured in battle and refused to give back.”

Lasercorn snorts. “Nice.”

Sohinki is a little relieved. “He sounds cool.”

“Well, I don’t know if you’d like him,” Jackie says, a little sly. “Because he is convinced that video games rot your brain.”

“Wait,” Sohinki says, raising his hand. “Objection. Where’s the part where we object to your marriage?”

“That would be in the Christian ceremony that you said you didn’t like.”

“Darn it.” Sohinki snaps his fingers.

“Seriously,” Lasercorn says. “Congratulations.”

Sohinki leans on him a little, grateful. “Yeah, congratulations.”

“Thank you,” Jackie says, reaching out and squeezing his arm. Sohinki feels a flood of affection, and has to look away.

“I saw your flowers,” she says.

Sohinki scratches his head, messing up his hair. It could have been anyone else.

But it wasn’t. “I always try to visit her when I go home.”

“What did you tell her?”

“That I missed her,” Sohinki says immediately. “And that I’m sorry for losing touch with you.”

“What a coincidence,” Jackie laughs softly. “Me too.”

“Really?”

“Well, first I told her that I would be getting married the next day, which was kinda the main part of it. But I also knew that you’d be at the wedding, and I knew that Mom would have liked us to at least stay friends.”

“We can,” Sohinki offers. “We should.”

And then Jackie says she’d like that, so Sohinki has to hug her again. She used to be smaller than him, even when everyone his age got bigger and taller and left him behind, Jackie was still smaller than him. But even Jackie’s grown proper muscles now, her shoulder probably wider than his, and the most unexpected part to him is that the sense memory of hugging her has become different and strange after ten years and a funeral, his arm around her now feeling slightly wrong compared to those sleepless nights in the hospital room, to the way they learned to hold onto the only other person who would understand, who was as terrified and as out of their depth.

Sohinki doesn’t know if they will call or chat after this, and maybe they’ve just grown into different people altogether, but at least there’s no longer this raw, open wound between them, and maybe, when it’s scabbed over, they can relearn how to be not-siblings again, not quite friends, not quite family, but someone who they would invite to their wedding, if it comes.

***

Sohinki does stay for the dance.

“That was nice,” Lasercorn says.

“Wow, you’re just, horribly off rhythm.”

“So are half the people at this party!”

“I know,” Sohinki shudders.

It’s loud and raucous and all of the people who are not the designated driver are completely smashed. Sohinki and Lasercorn for self-preservation purposes have set up camp at a little corner of the room where the food’s coming in. They keep an eye out for Jackie’s grandma who _is_ in attendance and who has _not_ mellowed out over the years.

There was a dangerous moment when a slow song was coming on and Lasercorn seemed like he wanted to try his luck, but then someone seized control of the playlist and put on, for whatever reason, the Virginia state anthem.

“I came all this way,” Lasercorn mutters. “You could at least dance with me once.”

“Joven was supposed to come all this way,” Sohinki reminds him.

“Joven is sending me increasingly hysterical texts about how he shouldn’t have let me talk him into this.”

“Lol,” Sohinki says. “Let me see.”

It’s a mistake. After talking with Jackie, Sohinki’s been feeling exceptionally generous, and Joven seems appropriately apologetic and scared for his life. There’s Joven feeding Lasercorn lines to plead his case, Joven badmouthing the great state of Virginia, Joven being clueless about all things Jewish, and also Joven whining about Sohinki being Joven’s best friend, not Lasercorn’s, goddammit, which does something to Sohinki’s heart. They _are_ best friends. Sohinki might feel some type of way about Lasercorn, but Joven has always been his best friend. Joven understands being scared of the ocean. Joven was the one he trusted enough to ask for advice. Joven was the one he needed for wedding emotional support. All the sudden he’s halfway to forgiving Joven already, and that’s unacceptable.

“C’mon,” Lasercorn says teasingly. “Joven is so sorry.”

Sohinki glares at Lasercorn, but he’s unable to work up any real anger.

“Not sorry enough. You could say that everything that’s happened this weekend is Joven’s fault.”

“Nah,” Lasercorn elbows Sohinki. “Scientifically like 80% of it is my fault.”

“Well,” Sohinki mutters, his cheeks for some goddam reason heating up. “You’ve done the math.”

Another elbow. A tug at Sohinki’s sleeve.

“You really don’t feel like dancing?”

“Not slow dancing!”

Lasercorn rolls his eyes.

“Stop worrying about it.”

“Worrying about what?”

“What everyone will think. I mean, Wes already hates you.”

Sohinki runs a compulsive hand through his hair. It is mildly annoying and at the same time secretly wonderful to be known so well, at least by one person in the world.

“I don’t know what I’d say,” Sohinki admits. “What do I even fucking tell them?”

“We went over this. You don’t have to say anything unless they ask. Then you just say yes.”

“Just two bros going out, no big deal.”

“Exactly.” Lasercorn clasps him on the back.

“Yo.” Sohinki shakes his head. “Yo, why are you bouncing on your feet?”

Lasercorn stops. Turns to look at Sohinki.

“Was I?” He asks wonderingly. “I’m just excited I guess.”

This has to end soon, Sohinki thinks. Something is going to happen—a meteor is going to fall from the sky any moment now and obliterate this small wedding in this Virginian town, because happiness of this kind can’t last. Illicit happiness, precious and stolen and dear. Unsustainable. Bright, like the sun.

“You’re getting teary,” Lasercorn observes. Somehow Lasercorn’s strong, stubby fingers find Sohinki’s hand.

“Shut the fuck up,” Sohinki says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The ending next. Also comments would still be lovely.


	7. Hypothesis #7: All connections are imperfect. All men are damned. Earn your happy endings.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Four ways Sohinki and Lasercorn gave themselves away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will never be able to do a truly accurate Joven voice because it will hurt me too much to do English so wrong.

7.a: Joven

Joven is at his heart the bear from Winnie-the-Pooh, existentially incapable of _not_ sticking his hand into the honeypot. Only this time the honeypot is a metaphor for hot, hot gossip and the angry beehive is a metaphor for grumpy Sohinki. Sometimes even Lasercorn will marvel at Joven’s fearlessness slash self-destructiveness, poking at a clearly grumpy Sohinki like that, precisely when they all know Sohinki will say extremely mean things he doesn’t really mean.

But Sohinki might no longer be grumpy. Sure, Sohinki still has Joven’s number and Instagram blocked, but that was the rash action of a spurned young man. Any number of things might have happened between then and now that improved his mood. For example, he might have even gotten laid.

Clue number 1: Lasercorn’s reply to Joven that said, _relax dude he isn’t that mad_. How would Lasercorn know Sohinki was mad or not if things hadn’t gone well?

Clue number 2: Sohinki’s post on Instagram of him and the bride-to-be friend, where he doesn’t look that mad.

Clue number 3: Sohinki’s reply to people asking him on Instagram why he blocked Joven, a simple, ominous _Joven knows why_. It also sounds kind of jokey and Sohinki wouldn’t have done that if he was that mad.

Context clues in hand, Joven feels perfectly justified in bounding up to Sohinki and Lasercorn as soon as they arrive at the office the Monday after and demanding to know how it went. Absently he notes Clue number 4: They arrived together.

Clue number 5: They share a conspiratorial glance before either of them talks.

Clue number 6: Sohinki rolls his eyes and says, “So we’re dating now, I guess.”

“Yes.” Joven pumps his fist. He might have even jumped into the air a little, but all is well because once again Joven believes in the Power of Love. There might just be people who can feel it, people who may have as a result of their frequent brushes with death acquired a sort of extrasensory perception, who can tell when love is in the air.

Not for the first time does Joven keenly feel the call of matchmaking. Of course, his reality show would be called The Paranormal Love Pirate, all rights reserved.

Half of this Joven’s said out loud.

Sohinki cracks up. “The twist is, you’d have slept with half of the cast when the season is over.”

“No,” Joven yelps. “Not hashtag Cancel Joven.”

***

7.b: Mari

Mari has always secretly hoped that at least half of her friends are gay, and by “secretly” she means “blatantly” and “with stirring the rumor mill as much as she’s able.” Beside the obvious joke pairing of Ian and Lasercorn, she’s been keeping an eye out for Guy Friends Who Have Suspiciously Good Chemistry Together. It is a long list, but it’d be a lot shorter if she could bring herself to cross off Joven altogether, who _is_ very flamboyant but probably only from being an annoying theater kid growing up.

It’s not like Mari particularly cares about updating this list. It would just be very funny and some kind of poetic justice if one of the guys vehemently proclaiming their heterosexuality, dreading every crossdressing punishment and constantly telling people to eat a dick turns out to be gay. Heartwarming reddit story, exactly 2,134 upvotes, here we go. Anyway, it’s L.A. Maybe the city of profligate sexual excess can have some effect on even the most testosterone overdosed video gamers.

After all, it is not a bad thing to change. To want to reevaluate. If you wake up and suddenly decide to change yourself then at least this is the city to do it in, as if the sheer, hypnotic power of landscape can fool people into believing in impossible things. Guys can realize they’re not straight when they are twenty-eight. Girls can let dreams of becoming the principal dancer go.

Mari sometimes wishes she were as brave as Lasercorn, someone who transformed from a proper journalist to a degenerate YouTuber without at any point undergoing an existential crisis. A man whose struggles are entirely external. It did not surprise her at all that Lasercorn would take to liking dick with the same ready acceptance and with the full force of his personality, and would pursue Sohinki with the intensity of a stalker and the sincerity of a love-struck prince.

There was one moment, not just the one, but Mari remembers it clearly because it was the moment that she knew. They were at another one of those industry parties where they should have tried to meet new people but instead just ended up talking to their friends, some event for Twitch, maybe. But they had five of them at that party and without paying any particular attention to it, and without any inkling beforehand, Mari suddenly knew. From the beginning it was a strangely subtle thing, where Lasercorn always made sure that he had Sohinki within arm’s reach. At one point they got waved over by the Warp Zone guys and Lasercorn waited until Sohinki was out of the bathroom to drag him along, and sometime after that Mari, Flitz and Sohinki started dancing and Lasercorn wouldn’t dance but he’d be nearby, constantly pulling Sohinki over to say something in his ear and Sohinki’d let him do it like that, must have been so annoying, dancing for half a minute and then being pulled over just for some shitty joke, probably, but Sohinki’d laugh every single time, delighted, happy, like he didn’t want to be anywhere else. And Mari knew. They were like that because they didn’t go to the party with the rest of the group. They’d only gone with each other. That was what couples did at parties, sticking together and having a private, side conversation in addition to everything else that’s going on. Being oddly clingy and possessive. Doing everything they can to avoid the remote but terrifying possibility of being stranded without the other. And then Lasercorn kept reaching for something on his head in vain until Sohinki produced a pair of sunglasses from the pocket of his sweatshirt.

Lasercorn has lost every single pair of sunglasses he’s ever owned, except maybe not anymore.

To Mari the realization was in turns infuriating and clarifying. How long has this been going on? Why didn’t they tell anyone about it but then be so blatantly adorable together? Did they even know they were a couple, or were they being dumb, oblivious boys? Each possibility is more maddening than the next, and Mari will assemble all the evidence she can before going Zero Dark Thirty on them herself.

***

7.c: Flitz

The day was cursed the moment Mari sits Flitz down at Jack in the Box and asks, “Do you think Lasercorn and Sohinki are doing it?”

Because Flitz knows right then that he’d be thinking about Lasercorn and Sohinki doing it for the rest of the day. It’s the perfect kind of idea that he would obsess about, an argument that he’d randomly come up with the evidence either for or against throughout the day when he should be doing other, more productive things that actually pertain to his job. But the gears are already set in motion.

Flitz buries his head in his hands.

“They went in together today.”

“Yeah,” Mari confirms grimly. “Which is sus, because Sohin always comes in later than everyone else.”

It doesn’t necessarily mean anything. They stay over at each other’s place all the time, like, all six of them do, hanging out and playing video games until unreasonable hours in the morning and then just roughing it on the couch, controller hugged to their chest. It doesn’t have to mean anything. It’s just one of the many items on one of those If You See Any of These Signs posters for identifying when someone has had a stroke.

“I think Lasercorn used to come over so they can teach each other StarCraft or something,” Flitz says slowly.

“Lasercorn’s stopped hitting on Sohin,” Mari says.

“I _know_. I was hoping that meant he’d given up.”

Mari stabs at her salad.

“It probably just means that he’s succeeded and they’re keeping it on the down low.”

“No,” Flitz drawls. “Nah. That was five months ago? No way they’re keeping it a secret that long.”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” Mari says, in the kind of tone that suggests she does _not_ think he’s right, and in fact _wants_ him to be wrong.

“Would you actually be disappointed if they’re not dating?”

“Yes?” Mari says like it is extremely obvious. “That’s the only way any of this makes sense.”

“And if they _are_ dating, you’re still going to be angry at them for not telling you.”

“Yeah,” Mari admits. “There’s literally no way for them to win. Or, they could come out and be honest right _now_ to their closest fucking friends, that could help them.”

Flitz doesn’t know why Lasercorn and Sohinki wouldn’t want to tell the group. Literally none of them would mind. The only thing is that Smosh might have to pause the gay jokes for exactly two weeks until they play any of the gay-making games like Sims 4 or Minecraft and then all bets are off.

Wait.

“Remember when we played Minecraft last week?” Flitz says slowly.

Mari is intrigued.

“Yeah?”

“Sohinki demanded that Lasercorn give him the ninja dagger and Lasercorn actually did it.”

“Oh yeah,” Mari says. “That happened. Didn’t Lasercorn just say _Okay_ and then gave it to Sohin for no reason? That’s love right there.”

“I thought it was a flex thing. Like, _Hey, would you still do anything to get into my pants?_ And the answer was yes.”

“Oh my God, oh my God.” Mari bats at Flitz’s arm, seeming to suddenly realize something. “Maybe, maybe. Hey, maybe that was their dumb way of telling us. Could that be their dumb way of telling us without telling us?”

“Maybe,” Flitz says, laughing. “You know it doesn’t have to mean anything. We’re just, like, cherry-picking stuff right now.”

“So they don’t announce anything because they probably think that’s lame, and instead they just, what, hope that we notice and don’t make a big deal out of it? Why else would Lasercorn just give Sohin the dagger?”

Flitz has to stop her.

“Mari, Mari, stop,” he says. “This is like a rabbit hole. Why don’t you just ask them?”

“I need more evidence! You know how cops when they call suspects in they already know who did it, right? I got to be like that.”

“No. Most of the time the cops are actually just bluffing.”

“Oh,” Mari says. “Wait, really?”

“You could literally just bluff them, right now.”

“I could. But I’m a terrible actor. I can’t lie for shit.”

That’s true. When Mari needs to lie she always goes into an acting mode that consists entirely of her doing things just a little exaggeratedly, as if the intensity of her gestures and speech will convince herself of things she knows not to be true.

“Just ask them outright,” Flitz says finally. “If you’re wrong then you’re wrong.”

Mari clasps his hands and blinks innocently.

“Can you ask them?”

“Nope,” Flitz says, and runs.

***

7.d: Lasercorn

Lasercorn has the most of his life-altering revelations while editing videos, second most while in the shower, and third most while waiting in line at the grocery store. This particular life-altering revelation is in the middle of him watching Sohinki watch a Dota tournament, where he understands precisely twenty-one percent of what’s going on and purposefully asks Sohinki daft questions for the entertainment value. And as Lasercorn is carelessly slandering the Weaver’s Q ability it suddenly becomes clear to Lasercorn that all of this is absolutely necessary, that he needs to be able to mess with Sohinki all the time, needs to be allowed to push all the buttons he wants until it produces his desired result—either Sohinki helplessly laughing and not paying attention to the tournament anymore, or Sohinki giving him a quick kiss in order to make him stop. Lasercorn unthinkingly squeezes Sohinki’s hand. He finds that he immediately needs to go, go and _do something_ , anything to make this last, so he just gets up and tells Sohinki:

“I need to go.”

“What,” Sohinki says, alarmed. “What are you talking about?” But Lasercorn is already out the door.

“You always do this,” Sohinki shouts down the hallway. “Would it fucking kill you—wait!” But then Sohinki doesn’t actually stop watching the tournament and chase Lasercorn down, because some things never change.

***

Lasercorn surprises the girl at the store by being neither nervous nor knowledgeable. He isn’t nervous because he has perfect clarity about what he wants, and he isn’t knowledgeable because why would he be? He briefly considers making the ring Hearthstone themed but anything remotely videogame related in the store looks incredibly tacky, and he doesn’t really have the time to order the pretty stuff off of Instagram or Etsy that is going to take weeks to arrive. He needs to get this done now. It feels strangely, fatalistically urgent. Sohinki tends to inspire that kind of urgency in Lasercorn for some reason, where Lasercorn is not chasing anyone down at the airport begging them not to go, but he’s still holding on with everything that he has.

Maybe if he has the ring he won’t feel that way for long.

There is no fully formed picture in Lasercorn’s head of what he wants for the ring, but he wants something that communicates, _This is for good_ , something that says, _I am dead fucking serious Hinki_ , and something that looks good on such a nice hand. All of it is conducive to making Lasercorn the biggest sucker this store location has seen in months, for which Lasercorn has no real plan of dealing with except for a hard limit of two fucking thousand dollars and throwing himself at the mercy of the saleswomen. When it turned out that Lasercorn didn’t come prepared with Sohinki’s ring size, they did helpfully suggest an estimate from the millions of pictures of Sohinki that Lasercorn had on his phone. Somewhere in there was a close-up of Sohinki with his hand on his chin, laughing at something off-camera, and it hit Lasercorn right in the fucking stomach in the moment to imagine a ring there, something slim and with the hammered finish they showed him, glinting in the light.

Lasercorn doesn’t really know what the reaction will be, just that it will probably be a yes. Neither of them has planned to marry any time soon—Sohinki has said something vague and self-deprecating about probably marrying someone out of his league—but what could it all have been leading toward except for this? Who else could they belong to? If they’ve wasted the best years of their life circling around each other then they should at least have the decency to not let it all be in vain.

***

Sohinki’s reaction is that he laughs. Then he says the damnedest, most reasonable thing:

“I think I expected something like this, the way you were acting.”

Sohinki also seems physically incapable of looking away from the ring. Lasercorn grins, feeling warm all over.

“Well?”

“Is it too early?” Sohinki asks, still not looking away from the ring, and then answers himself immediately, “Suppose not, ‘cause we’ve known each other for so long.”

“We don’t have to get married right away,” Lasercorn reminds him. “I don’t look forward to planning a wedding, to be honest.”

“Then what’s the point of this?”

Lasercorn shrugs.

“Seems more permanent? Makes me sleep easier at night?”

“I’m not going to cheat on you!”

“I don’t know,” Lasercorn grumbles, scratching at his beard. “I guess I. I mean.”

Sohinki looks up, back at Lasercorn. A faint, hopeful smile on his face.

“Yeah?”

They are at Sohinki’s place, cuddled on the bed, Sohinki having wiggled himself into Lasercorn’s lap as far as he would go. It is the most natural motion for Lasercorn to reach over, pick up the ring and pick up Sohinki’s hand.

“I guess I loved you so much that there was no way of expressing it except for this. This was the only thing I could think of.”

Lasercorn slides the ring softly onto Sohinki’s finger. It fits.

“I see,” Sohinki says.

This close Lasercorn can feel the stutter in Sohinki’s breath.

“I did want to make it permanent, I think. That was a big part of it. I don’t want to let you go. I remember thinking I’d have gone crazy if I was Wes.”

Sohinki flexes his hand. Lasercorn swallows.

“How are you so sure?” Sohinki whispers.

Lasercorn kisses the back of Sohinki’s neck, the fine hair there.

“After everything that’s happened? Yeah, I’m sure.”

“You just wanted Wes to back off, didn’t you?”

God, that scent again. Lasercorn loves smelling the back of Sohinki’s neck. A natural sort of hair smell because Sohinki doesn’t use scented shampoo, and the clean, soft, clinging smell of skin underneath.

Lasercorn coughs. “A ring might do it, yeah.”

“Fine,” Sohinki huffs. He would sound exasperated but for the fact that his voice is shaking. “Give me your phone.”

Lasercorn surrenders his phone, and then he watches as Sohinki takes a selfie with both of them, Lasercorn with his nose still buried in Sohinki’s neck, and Sohinki rolling his eyes at the camera but brandishing his ring. Then Sohinki posts it to Lasercorn’s Instagram.

“What,” Lasercorn says, mildly alarmed.

“Yes this is real,” Sohinki mouths as he types. “Congratulate us on the sick engagement motherfuckers.”

“You never curse like that on _your_ account,” Lasercorn protests, but he undermines it by snaking a happy hand under Sohinki’s sweatshirt. He feels dangerously combustible right now, as if happiness can explode out of him if he doesn’t contain it soon. Squeezing Sohinki’s middle with the force of both of his arms helps, and it gets a surprised, delighted “Oof” from Sohinki, who begins to giggle uncontrollably in his arms.

“Just think about what their face will be when they see it,” Sohinki says. “Mari’s wanted it to happen for so long.”

Lasercorn flips Sohinki on his back. They’re both flushed and fighting to keep huge, dumb grins from completely breaking their face.

“I’m going to turn off both of our phones,” Lasercorn says, but he can’t stop staring at Sohinki long enough to do it. Instead he brings Sohinki’s ring finger to his face and kisses it, runs his mouth over the cool hardness of the metal and the warm softness of the skin, as if some magic emanates from the shock of the contrast, spellbinding them both to the moment in time. Whatever it is that’s between them right now, it’s infectious, and it’s dear, and Lasercorn feels like he can just touch it if he tries hard enough. It feels almost too enormous for his body, terrifying, but Lasercorn has never flinched from a challenge in his life.

Sohinki is squirming for leverage, and Lasercorn wants to hold him still, kiss him senseless, and so Lasercorn does, because it wouldn’t be another five minutes before their phones start blowing up with calls and texts from friends and family, demanding explanation, offering the requested blessings, and then with approximately a billion notifications on Instagram from everyone else. But, for this moment, for this five-minute reprieve that is only really as long as a song, they can just let the world fall away.

Sohinki hums under his attention, rhythmless and distracted and then, as if he suddenly remembers something, he pulls away.

“Do we deserve this?” Sohinki asks.

Lasercorn knows that Sohinki worries constantly about Wes, about whether they deserve this happiness or they deserve something else for what they did, some karma that will catch them some time in the future, because Sohinki can be annoyingly spiritual like that. But it’s never been about getting what they deserve, and punishing themselves is much less efficient than merely trying to make amends as they go, hoping that it will be enough, in the end, leaving Wes alone if Wes wants it, or begging for forgiveness if Wes needs it. And Lasercorn can do that for Sohinki. He can leave Smosh. He can abandon his dignity. It wouldn’t even be a sacrifice because by sheer, mathematical calculations it would just be things Lasercorn is willing to do. Put all of it on a scale, what would you be willing to do in order to be happy with the person you love?

“Don’t think about that,” Lasercorn advises Sohinki seriously. “Just think happy thoughts about me. I’m right in front of you and everything.”

“You really are,” Sohinki says wonderingly, as if marveling at the extraordinariness of Lasercorn being there on top of him, restricting his airflow. It is like a disease. Sohinki still sometimes checks if Lasercorn was real, poking at Lasercorn’s forearms and playing with Lasercorn’s hair, checking to see if Lasercorn was flesh and blood. It’s not really even that Sohinki thinks that Lasercorn will suddenly stop being into guys. It’s that Sohinki thinks Lasercorn is too good for him, and will leave once he realizes what a petty, joyless, try-hard dime-a-dozen video gamer Sohinki is. Sohinki has told Lasercorn once, without any irony, that Lasercorn was a better person in every way that mattered.

“But you’re very pretty,” Lasercorn had said that time, also without any irony, because Sohinki is pretty and bossy and funny, which happens to precisely be Lasercorn’s type too.

Sohinki’s phone vibrates on the bed.

“Don’t turn it off,” Sohinki says. “Could be my parents.”

“Your parents follow me on Instagram?”

“My brother does.”

“Oh,” Lasercorn says. “Well, I’m just looking to see who it is.”

Lasercorn reaches for the phone. It _is_ Sohinki’s brother. He turns it off anyway.

“Hey!” Sohinki says, but he is already laughing.

Lasercorn presses his advantage. He grabs one of Sohinki’s wrists.

“We’re going to have some engagement sex,” he says optimistically. “And then we’re going worry about your impulsive Instagram post tomorrow.”

Sohinki bites his lips.

“What will we say?”

“Uh. I assumed you had a plan.”

“I think.” Sohinki ducks his head as much as he’s able. “I think I will say that you make me extremely happy, and that it’s recent, but I’ve loved you for a long time.”

Lasercorn brings Sohinki’s ring hand up and kisses it again, feeling a bit helpless, overwhelmed, like he is sinking in some quicksand irrevocably. Same intoxicating, heady sensation that overcame him in San Diego, taking over his body, letting him know his life will never be the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s done!!!!! Oh my god. Tell me what you think and also tell me if you want another Lasercorn/Sohinki fic but with the plot of a Law & Order episode.   
> Please leave a comment so I know a human has read this goddammit.

**Author's Note:**

> Will probably update once a week? Also I might go back to edit the older chapters.


End file.
